NEWS
HARRIS BUS & COACH RESTRUCTURES IRELAND SENIOR MANAGEMENT TEAM
Shaun McBride
Willie Daniels
H arris Bus & Coach has strengthened its leadership team in Ireland with two major personnel changes. Willie Daniels, who joined the Harris Group in 2024 as Head of Bus & Coach for the company’s operations in Ireland and the UK, becomes Managing Director of Harris Bus & Coach Ireland. Daniels will drive the business forward through 2026 as it gears up for the introduction of new HIGER V Series models, as well as an electric bus range. Meanwhile, Shaun McBride steps up to the position Head of Coach Sales for Ireland. McBride has more than two decades of experience working in the light commercial I rish drivers are responding to the fuel price crisis in two distinct ways. EV-specific searches on DoneDeal Cars have risen 125% since the outbreak of the conflict in Iran, while diesel searches have fallen 19.5% in share in the same period. Hybrid searches have risen 42.9%. EV charging costs in Ireland have re- mained stable in recent months while pet- rol and diesel prices have surged, giving electric car owners a growing structural advantage. But EV efficiency varies con- siderably with driver behaviour. DoneDeal Cars analysis and experimenta- tion shows that energy consumption rises by around 28% at 120km/h compared to 100km/h. The single most effective change an EV driver can make on motor-
vehicle and PSV sectors, both in Ireland and the UK. McBride started his career at a Volkswagen dealership in the UK, before switching to the bus and coach industry with Mercedes-Benz in Mallusk. Subsequent roles have included time in the minibus conversion sector. Daniels has gained a wealth of experience having worked for more than 25 years in the bus and coach sector. In that time, he has held a variety of roles – from sales to account management and from senior management to operations. With this vast expertise, he is ideally placed to oversee growth and to extend the reach of Harris Bus & Coach in Ireland.
A key focus for Daniels is to develop Harris Bus & Coach’s longstanding mobile roadside and technical support service, which is offered as standard to all HIGER customers. Harris’ own team of engineers, trained specifically to work on HIGER models, can deliver on-call technical support to in-house fleet technicians, as well as provide on-site services. Operators can also use the facility to escalate less urgent work through the dealer network. The offering helps fleets to maximise uptime, recover service in case of a breakdown and provide all-important peace-of-mind when running intensive timetables.
EV SEARCHES MORE THAN DOUBLE SINCE THE IRAN CONFLICT
way journeys is to hold a steady 100km/h on the inside lane — it costs very little in journey time and meaningfully extends range. Pre-conditioning the cabin while the car is still plugged in, rather than drawing heat or air conditioning from the battery while driving can extend real-world range in cold Irish winters. Most modern EVs allow this to be scheduled from a smartphone app. Regenerative braking settings, often la- belled ‘one-pedal driving’, recover signifi- cantly more energy in stop-start urban traffic than conventional braking and are worth engaging by default in city driving. “Irish drivers are responding to the fuel crisis in two ways simultaneously — those who can change car are actively moving
toward EVs and hybrids at a pace our platform data has rarely shown before,” commented Paddy Comyn, Head of Auto- motive Content and Communications, Do- neDeal Cars.
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