At the last meeting of the London General Omnibus Company the deputy-chairman stated that there was no kind of motor traction that would pay the company to take up. If anything was done in that direction it would be in the use of petrol. Steam was of no use, because of the great vibration, and he doubted if the Government would permit 15,000 such omnibuses to run over the streets. In his opinion the time to take up motor omnibuses had not yet arrived. But the London Road Car Company has taken a different and more far-sighted view of the situation, and a combination of petrol and electricity is now to be tested by it. Cars of the Fischer combination pattern have arrived from America. Each has a 10 horse-power petrol engine which drives a dynamo, the current from which is used to work a motor acting directly on the wheels. This may, perhaps, seem a needless complication, but there is much method in it. A 10 horse-power engine is not sufficiently powerful to drive a fully-laden ’bus up a hill at any reasonable pace, but there are many places where a ’bus will run by its own weight, and needs no engine. The new car is provided with accumulators. When little or no power is required by the motor, the current is switched on to the accumulators, so as to store up a reserve for hill-climbing. So when necessary, the car draws on the reserve in the accumulators, and with them and the dynamo develops not 10 but 20 horse-power, enough to take it up and over any hill that ’buses climb. [Illustration: FIG. 29. A “FISCHER” COMBINATION OMNIBUS Capacity fifteen passengers; weight, 2 tons 13 cwt.; speed, 12 miles an hour _By permission of the Fischer Motor Vehicle Syndicate, Ltd., London_] The manager of the Road Car Company is of opinion that the new vehicles will carry from twelve to twenty passengers. Owing to the greater speed of the motors, however, the passenger accommodation provided by, say, half a dozen such cars would be greater than that of a similar number of omnibuses, for the service would be more frequent. Not much increase of speed can be hoped for in congested areas, but outside these the motor should be able to run half as fast again as the horsed ’bus. There exists, however, no reason why a still more improved and refined omnibus service should not be started, electricity alone being adopted, instead of steam, petrol, or a combination. Runs of seventy and eighty miles without recharging are perfectly feasible by using standard long-distance batteries, and would suffice for the daily journeys of the omnibus, while the recharging could be effected with little or no trouble after working-hours.