I noticed RTD had new buses last time I was there. I recall that the original TransTeq EcoMark buses were very progressive for their time. If I remember the story correctly, RTD couldn't find a company that built the right bus for them, so they went off and more or less built their own. Then, over the next decade and a half, I began to see their distinctive low floors and warty roofs in cities and airports all over the nation.

I proud of my little city for leading the way, but I'm a little sad to see that TransTeq seems to have disappeared. For a while, it seemed like their ideas were taking over the world. But at least the technology advanced overall.

Anyway, my favorite part about the new BYD buses on the Mall is their noise. They have a speaker on the front that 'growls' so that the otherwise-quiet buses have a harder time sneaking up on pedestrians. New solutions to new problems!

Funny you should mention the noise. I took a tour of their charging facility, and the fleet manager noted the busses were originally too quiet. They went to the toy store, bought some toy trucks and rigged that growling solution from the truck noise makers.

Good use case, because damn is it easy. It's ~2 miles, inside a pedestrian corridor (one of the few in America, alas!). A modest size battery pack would go quite a ways when you barely hit 10 mph (16 kph), at least if there's a solid regenerative brake.

Stanford electric buses are BYD. It is right under the nose of Tesla :) (on the med school route the buses even pass right by the Tesla headquarters)

They accelerate quite nicely, so it's not so bad to be stuck behind one.