Wrightbus

In 1993, the Pathfinder on low floor Dennis Lance SLF and Scania N113CRL chassis was unveiled.

Nottingham City Transport Scania L94UA in Nottingham in January 2003

The Axcess-Ultralow was introduced in 1995 and offered on the Scania L113 chassis. At this time it was selling in reasonable numbers to UK bus operators, but unlike other bodybuilders who could only offer the L113 with step-entrance bodies, Wright modified it by removing the middle section of the chassis and thus offered UK bus operators one of the first mainstream low-floor body/chassis combinations. A major customer for the Axcess-Ultralow was FirstGroup, taking approximately 240.

Next up was the Volvo B10L based Liberator introduced at the end of 1995: National Express ordered 120 in 1997.

Next came the Renown body built on the Volvo B10BLE which went on to become the standard bus of the Blazefield Group. Production was stopped when the B10BLE was replaced by the Volvo B7L on the new Wright Eclipse (now Wright Eclipse Metro), which due to its vertical rear engine wasn't popular with many operators. Nevertheless, Wright did not lose custom and many operators such as Ulsterbus switched to the incline-engined Scania L94UB, on a similar Wright Solar body. Another bodywork which resembles the current Solar/Eclipse range is the Meridian, which was bodied on the MAN A22 full low-floor single-deck chassis.

Lothian Buses Wright Eclipse Gemini bodied Volvo B7TL in Edinburgh in April 2010

The most distinctive Wright product is the New Routemaster London bus, introduced in February 2012 as an update of the AEC Routemaster.[10] Production ended in 2017 when the 1,000th left the production line.[11]

The first Wright Eclipse Gemini double-decker was built on the Volvo B7TL chassis in 2001. A similarly styled bus entered service with Arriva London in August 2003 as the Wright Pulsar Gemini on the VDL DB250 chassis. Large operators of Gemini-bodied buses include Arriva, FirstGroup, Go-Ahead Group, Lothian Buses and National Express. In 2016, the Wright SRM was introduced on the Volvo B5LH.[12]

Since May 2013, Wrightbus has also built its own chassis, the StreetLite single-decker and StreetDeck double decker. However, they still continue to produce bodywork for the Volvo B5TL, Volvo B5LH and Volvo B8RLE.[13][14][15]

Between September and October 2019, Wrightbus entered administration with the suspension of 1,300 jobs at their factory.[16] At the time of Deloitte being appointed as the company's administrators, Wrightbus were £60m in debt,[17] with £38.1 million owed to the Bank of Ireland. It was said that they had insufficient assets to pay off its creditors so had the company been liquidated, they would not have been paid.[17]

During the six years prior to Wrightbus going into administration, it was reported that Jeff Wright, the owner of the company, had donated £15m to a church he had founded in 2007, Green Pastures Church.[18] This led to protests on 29 September 2019 which were joined by many of the company's former workers, including members of the Wright family.[19]

On 11 October 2019, a deal was reached in principle between Jo Bamford (son of Anthony Bamford, chairman of the construction equipment manufacturer JCB) and the Wright family for the land used by the factory, a sticking point in negotiations to sell the firm.[20][21] A deal was made with the administrators eleven days later, with Jo Bamford's Bamford Bus Company concluding a takeover of the company.[22]

Since the takeover of Wrightbus, Bamford has been committed to creating a market for hydrogen buses with a reconfigured StreetDeck that is powered by hydrogen. In 2020, Bamford said he planned to build 3,000 buses of this type by 2024.[23]

First Aberdeen Wright StreetDeck Hydroliner in Peterculter in July 2022

Wrightbus has followed two strategies towards zero emission: battery powered and fuel-cell (powered by hydrogen) vehicles. The operator Go Ahead has placed orders for fuel-cell buses for its Metrobus and Brighton & Hove fleets, and Translink in Northern Ireland made an initial order for 38 battery vehicles.[24]

Wrightbus announced in February 2023 that it was planning to build a green hydrogen production facility on its Ballymena site in partnership with Hygen Energy, capable of producing enough hydrogen to fuel up to 300 buses per day with the option to triple its production in line with future demand for the fuel.[25][26] Funding for the construction of electrolysers at the facility was secured from the first round of the UK government's £37.9 million UK Net Zero Hydrogen Fund in March 2023.[27][28] Wrightbus was later granted up to £534,000 million in funding from the UK government-sponsored Advanced Propulsion Centre fund in September 2023 to develop a driveline for a hydrogen fuel cell-powered coach, which will be intended as a functional "technology demonstrator".[29]