DES PLAINES, Ill. — Motor Coach Industries is rolling into 2018 on a high note with new and redesigned coaches, a major new service center in Northern California, continued support from its parent company and a customer-centric focus from its first-year president.
“NFI Group is a great parent,” MCI President Ian Smart said of New Flyer Industries Inc., which is wrapping up its second full year with its MCI subsidiary.
“They’re supportive of investments. They understand and respect the MCI brand and recognize that it’s got a real strong following and a loyal customer base,” said Smart, who took over as MCI’s president last January. “Their approach is to support the organization and help it do the things that it wants to do to support customers.”
MCI is preparing to exit 2017 with more units sold than a year ago and looking forward to the road ahead.
A new addition to its commuter-coach lineup was just revealed in October at APTA Expo in Atlanta. It is an update of its D-coach: the D45 CRT LE, or 45-foot commuter rapid transit low-entry vehicle.
“We’ve got a very innovative design for our commuter customers,” Smart said of the vehicle.
The D45 CRT LE features a design allowing disabled passengers to roll into the vehicle via a curb-level ramp to a special vestibule and be secured, all within about 60 to 90 seconds.
That’s a significant reduction in what Smart calls “dwell time” compared with traditional lift systems, and makes loading and unloading easier for the passenger and driver, also benefiting travel schedules.
MCI believes it is the only commuter coach in the world with this type of capability.
The curb-level ramp leads to a door that opens directly into a same-level, low-floor entry vestibule with passenger seating in the middle of the coach. The vestibule includes seating for five passengers, allowing for up to two secured mobility devices and an attendant.
The model offers a 54-passenger seating configuration, with seating for 52 when two passengers use a mobility device.
MCI, in an earlier statement about the coach, added that it features a progressive design and amenities and comfort to get commuters to switch from commuting by car.
Deliveries of the Buy-America compliant, Altoona-tested clean-diesel coach are expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2018, and MCI plans to offer an electric version of the coach in 2020.
“We will move to production of that vehicle coming out of our summer shutdown next year, so we’re literally about 12 months away,” Smart said. “We have a vehicle at the Altoona test track as we speak.”
MCI’s D-coach is a design that’s been around a long time, Smart said.
“It’s a very reliable vehicle, one that has been very good to our company and our customers, but it is time to update and upgrade that model,” he said. “So the CRT LE marks the first in what will be an update to our entire D line of products that will occur over the next number of years – new styling, new look, new features.”
MCI also continues advancing its J3500, a 35-foot coach it introduced earlier this year. It offers 40 seats standard, with an option for 44.
“We’ve had a tremendous amount of interest from customers,” Smart said of the vehicle, which fills what he said many would consider a notable gap in MCI’s product portfolio.
MCI has a prototype of the J3500 and will begin its validation and testing shortly, he said.
“The intent would be to have demos on the road mid-next year for customers to see and use and try and then … the vehicles would be for sale in early 2019,” Smart said.
“It’s built off the J platform, so one of the design goals is to have as many common bits and pieces and parts as is possible,” he said. “The driver cockpit will be identical to that of a 45-foot coach, so the intent is to make these vehicles’ entry into service and use in the customers’ fleet as seamless as is possible, so if someone is running J4500s today, a 3500 is a natural and simple addition to their fleet.”
MCI, meanwhile, continues to roll out its redesigned J4500 introduced earlier this year. MCI delivered the first motorcoaches to customers in late August, and everything coming off the line since then has been the new 2018 model year coach, Smart said, adding that response to the redesign has been good.
“We had a number of orders presold out of the factory prior to even getting into the launch of the vehicle, so most of those customers now have the vehicles,” he said.
Among design highlights in the new J4500 is additional interior space from reconfiguration of the lavatory and other elements.
“Depending on what an operator is after, if you’re somebody that wants to get more people on your coach, we can give you a 60-seat configuration, which from a spacing perspective is very comparable to our old 56-seat configuration,” Smart said. “Or, if you’re someone that wants to give your passengers more leg room, you can take a traditional 56-seat configuration and just make the passengers more comfortable. So for many of our operators, that’s a huge step forward.”
MCI also redid the driver’s area of the coach, redesigning the space for more legroom, he said. Additionally, it changed the dash to improve ergonomics and switches. The front edge of the dash is lower, giving drivers better visibility out of the coach, and it provides a fully electronic instrument panel.
“Gone are the days of the ‘check engine’ light,” Smart said. “Now when there’s a problem with the coach, we actually try to put the actual error message in the hands of the operator so they know what the problem is and what to do with it.”
Interior styling
MCI also improved the overall look and styling of the interior of the coach, including elements the design and engineering team added to modernize the interior, he said.
“The look, the feel of it is very different than what we had manufactured … so that’s, again, from a customer appeal, look and feel of the vehicle, a big step forward,” Smart said.
On the electric vehicle front, the new D45 CRT LE is expected to be well suited to commuter markets, especially bringing coachloads of riders in and out of major cities on long-haul commutes and also for employee shuttle markets like those in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“Many of those customers, being green, technology-focused entities, quite like the idea of zero-emissions vehicles and are actively asking for them,” Smart said, anticipating selling the first electric coach in 2020. MCI also expects to have a battery-electric version of its J4500 (the J4500e) available in January 2020.
New Flyer has been developing electric coaches for a number of years, providing a network of expertise for MCI to tap into as it develops its own versions, he said.
“Many of the vendors we’re working with, the methods of designing and validating and testing and all those types of things have been borrowed from our peers over at New Flyer,” he said.
The employee shuttle business in the Bay Area is important for MCI, which works with employers who own the coaches or contractors who buy the coaches and operate them for the employers, he said.
The Bay Area employee shuttle market has shown tremendous growth, “easily the fastest-growing segment of our market over the last 10 years, and so we have a number of customers and a bunch of coaches in that area,” Smart said. “It is a very demanding type of service … people are getting employees to work, so when coaches don’t work because they need maintenance, it needs to be done quickly and efficiently.”
Hence the new, $2 million-plus, 34,000-square-foot service center in the heart of the Bay Area, in Hayward. Customers have been asking for such a facility in the region, Smart said.
The center is scheduled for a grand opening in mid-November.
Large transit orders
This year also marked the fielding of large orders from transit authorities, including 185 commuter coaches for New Jersey Transit, the second installment in a six-year contract; 169 vehicles over three years for Houston Metro; and 112 over five years for CT Transit of Connecticut.
“Orders of that size with those types of longstanding customers are always certainly good for the company, good for the factory; they bring stability and repeatability to a manufacturing environment, which, again, is always a good thing,” Smart said. “This year, from that perspective, has been quite successful.”
MCI also is the exclusive distributor of Daimler’s Setra S 417 and S 407 motorcoaches in the United States and Canada. Smart said MCI’s agreement with Daimler has reached the end of the initial five-year period and now renews automatically on an annual basis.
For Smart personally, 2017 has been fantastic, he said.
“I’ve really enjoyed taking on the role and meeting both the team here at MCI and the customer base,” he said.
MCI’s ownership changes over the years created a challenging environment for employees, especially with respect to long-term investment, long-term health and the overall stability of the business, Smart said.
“So NFI has obviously been a real stabilizing force there,” he added. “The acquisition of MCI was an acquisition to own it for the long term, invest in it, and support both the employees and customers and so that has been kind of a real stabilizing force for the organization. So a big part of my job, both with the customers and with our employees, has been continuing to reinforce that message.”
As for 2018, Smart said, “if we get our D45 CRT LE launched successfully, our 3500 tested out and managed, and continue down our path of quality and service improvements, we will have had a pretty successful 2018 – and at the moment that is exactly our plan.”
