Transport committee  Good morning. My name is Chris Stoddart. I'm here representing New Flyer. Thank you for having me today. To tell you a little about New Flyer, we are the leading heavy-duty transit bus manufacturer in Canada and the United States. We've delivered over 31,000 buses. We were found

Transport committee  I think it's just the funding requirements and there are additional costs for the hybrids. It's not cheap. Give or take, it can be a $130,000 premium.

Transport committee  We're about 1,200 to 1,300.

Transport committee  Our Canadian volume really fluctuates. On average, I'd say probably only about 20% of our business is Canadian build, so that may be 400 or 500 buses in a year, give or take. About 80% of our business is U.S. On the hybrid side, it was a really quick adoption rate.

Transport committee  In 2009 it was 40% of our production, so about 900 buses.

Transport committee  Sorry, we make 2,000 buses a year, 900 of which are hybrids. Some 400 of those 2,000 go to Canada, Canadian customers.

Transport committee  It's almost the same ratio, about 40%. We've seen that trend actually come down a little bit, though.

Transport committee  It's fairly similar. We've really seen a spike in CNG sales. One of them is disproportionate, because we just happened to have a big customer in New York who bought a lot. I'm not sure that's necessarily indicative of a market trend, but definitely we're seeing a lot more major

Transport committee  We do sell CNG buses in Canada, but you know, I'm not sure. It's a lower percentage certainly than what we're seeing in the U.S.

Transport committee  I may want to clarify what I meant, at least from my perspective, when I said there were problems with batteries. There is lots of charging technology out there, and it all works and works very well. It's just a question of coming to a common approach or a standard for the metho

Transport committee  My comments will be very similar. The support of battery technology, I think, is huge, as is the funding for the charging. I guess the only other thing is that maybe it's a little bit broader, but as we begin to manage batteries, there will be a useful life, maybe six or seven

Transport committee  I'll start. It's on our 40-foot platform, so our intent would be to offer it in 35-, 40-, and 60-foot platforms. I guess, ultimately, that mini-bus that I was talking about, the smaller one, there's no reason it wouldn't migrate to that. I think it'd be a very good application, t

Transport committee  It depends, again, on the approach you take with batteries. Our one out of the gate has 120 kilowatt hours, which essentially means, in transit terms, about 80 kilometres or four hours worth of operation before it requires a charge. If you want to recharge, it takes about five t

Transport committee  That's a great question.

Transport committee  Exactly. I would agree with you. I don't think you want to do that now. Like I said, I think this is something that's going to be going on over a quarter-century, 25 years. I think we're going to all have to play in different areas and experiment, and see what works and what doe