7% at the end of a ~300mi roundtrip rural run is really cutting it close 😳 although if the journey is mostly flat I think it's OK, as long as there's enough range to go via any diversion if the road is blocked.

They could definitely get a bigger battery onto that roof, the main expense there probably would be customising the aircon to fit around a roof battery pack instead of buying one off the shelf

The electric buses here all have roof mounted batteries and they last pretty long - the chinese Yutongs are out all day with the heating on, but our domestic built ones seem to last only 3/4 of the day, and after that they vanish with the old diesel ones appearing on routes until the night