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Traveled Ernakulam-Bangalore by Greyhound travels. I booked on Sunday 8.15pm bus as all services on Monday evening was running full. It reached Edappally at 8.50pm against scheduled arrival of 8.25pm.

The bus become old now but the seats were comfortable. Stopped at Coimbatore for 20 mins tea break and some other short breaks for cargo. Finally, reached Silkboard at 7am through BETL. The fare was Rs. 560.

The bus become old now but the seats were comfortable.

Grey Hound introduced new bus yesterday. Painting looks good .The first service commenced yesterday from Ernakulam.

I tried out the 1830hrs service last week from Trichy to Chennai ; it was a beautiful ride through incessant heavy rain - seeing the lightning lit sky through the front windscreen was a treat .

Water did seep in through front door gaps and through wheel well.

We were in Ashok Pillar area at about 2345hrs.

Thats a good news.
I prefer this bus since it starts late, do not stop for dinner, skips Trichur etc. The ride quality was far better compared to some other operators though it was an old bus.

More photos of the KPN's Viking fitted with Auto transmission.
The engine and tranny is fine tuned to the extent that mileage difference is very less or sometime better as told by driver.

Is this done by the customer or by AL?
If the performance of the bus is good, then i would say its the Indian answer to Volvo's i-Shift which is coming soon! How well AL can make use of this is to be seen!

Is there a value proposition in an auto box for a long distance route for a private operator ?
I cannot believe that the answer is driver comfort judging by what I see in the pictures. Passenger comfort perhaps ?

This was initiated by customer and commisioned with the help of AL and Allision

How is it not driver comfort?? Is this not better than having to change gear manually operating a heavy clutch, especially in the crowded Indian cities?? Remember bus terminals are generally in the center of cities, which means from big cities, its almost an hour of driving inside the city before reaching a situation of highway cruising. Also some of our highways are very crowded, meaning having to drop a gear regularly to overtake slow moving traffic. An automatic tranmission is a boon to any Indian bus driver.

In fact, other than easing driver fatigue I see no major advantage of having an auto-box.

I see the point in your argument. But just looking at the photographs its apparent that there are plenty of improvement possible (Ergonomic in general) that can improve driver comfort throughout the journey and not just in the start and end points. The block of wood for a dead pedal is a case in point. I would have through that an Auto transmission made sense at a later part of the design evolution process from a driver comfort perspective, rather than plonking it in a bus with a block of wood for a dead pedal, a seat that is certainly not the benchmark for comfort, sharp edges all around the driver that look ready to maim, the steering wheel within 2 inches of the drivers crotch...

I never said its a good or even an "ok" driver environment. But the auto box is a step in the right direction, even though they may have skipped a few steps.

What is this switch for? Eco/power mode?

^^ Indian buses are not known to be powerful as Volvos are. With the AT, wouldn't it difficult for the driver to navigate ghat sections/overtaking easily?

On most buses, a fully loaded MT transport bus moans away to glory climbing a ghat. The driver inevitably drops couple of gears to even 1st at times to climb. Will the AT make this simple?

Isn't that why we have different modes in AT? I guess, the engineers must have worked out some solution for this, especially, the route which KPN takes(NH47 untill krishnagiri, then onto CBE) is with quite a lot of uphill sections, moreover, loading is not usually a problem for these private carriers. They have 36 seats, luggage weight and the laden weight of the bus would have been considered while gear ratios were formulated.(Just my guess)

where is that switch provided?
I am not able to find out?
There are enough home work done and the buses can easily negotiate the ghats. Additionally Indian buses are'nt under powered anymore.
Climbing the hills requiring a shift to first gear is a problem of the application of that bus and not the problem of the bus.