"Any information on Cristalis gratefully recieved. I have a brochure from Irisbus/Matra on the Civis but less on it's unguided 'cousin'. Do you follow developments in Rouen or St.Etienne where we assume the trolleybus version is to be installed? (Assuming Clemond/Las Vegas are diesel electric)."
I think that is right, Clermont+LasVegas = Civis diesel electric St. Etienne, Grenoble, Lyon = Cristalis trolley Rouen = guided, don't know the mode at the moment. I looked at 4 or 5 articles about Rouen, they never wrote about electrical lines, so assume that it will be diesel-electric. I'll keep you informed.
In France, 277 Cristalis/Civis will be sold at the moment. The other towns who are interested Linz (Austria), Cleveland, Phoenix, Honolulu (USA) Auckland (NewZealand) are interested. (I just read that in LaVieDuRail in january).
In Clermont-Ferrand, they started in january with a guided version of 6 Renaults Agora (rented) (normal busses, diesel) before testing guided Civis 1 year later. They have just 1 km of optical guidance system of the 5 km, but 13 of 24 bus stops will be guided.
For Colorado (Grand Canyon) it will be gas, and there are experiments with lithium-batteries and H2-cells (how do you call them?)
in fact Cristalis is not just a cousin but the twin of Civis, just the Matra-Camera changes. First I thought there is the Civis-Design (centered steering wheel) and Cristalis-Design (wheel on the left), but in fact these designs are independent of the guiding or not.
As there are guided versions with electrical and diesel-electrical propulsion there are no differences in this point, just the diesel-motor is less powerful (80 kW against 220 kW I guess). Asynchronous Motors (Alstom) in the wheels are the same, electronic (the electronic regulation of the propulsion chain is maid by alstom, btw I am engineer at Alstom Transports Lyon-Villeurbanne and worked on the project for the electronics) is the same... but withour guiding it's cheaper (don't know the Civis prices, think they are not known officially, the Cristalis-prices are on my website).
As in France there are local elections in March, every week there were presentations of propotypes: prime minister Linoel Jospin had a ride on Civis in Clermont-Ferrand 2 weeks ago, finance minister Fabius took one of them in Rouen the other day...)
