Swedish City Of Södertälje Launching Wireless Hybrid Bus Service In 2016
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The Swedish city of Södertälje will be launching a pilot project in 2016 utilizing a Scania hybrid-electric bus that can be wirelessly recharged in only ~7 minutes, based on a recent press release.
Needless to say, if the technology proves successful, the buses could help cities cut down significantly on their fuel use and costs (with regard to municipal transportation systems, at least).
The potential for reducing carbon emissions is also worth considering — something the Scandinavian countries often seem to take into consideration during policy-making decisions.
“To build an infrastructure and convert bus fleets to vehicles that run exclusively on electricity will provide many advantages for a city,” stated Håkan Sundelin, a research and development coordinator for Scania, while commenting on the project. “With a fleet of 2,000 buses, the city can save up to 50 million litres of fuel each year. This means the fuel costs decrease by up to 90%.”
A 90% cut in fuel use is nothing to sneeze at. That’s real savings there.
GAS2 provides more:
When the project launches, one of the bus stations will be equipped with an inductive battery recharging system that can transfer enough energy to complete a full journey back to the station. Unfortunately the press release doesn’t note exactly how far this journey is, though it’s hardly the first shot at a fast-charging electric bus. If other wireless electric buses are anything to go by though, it’s probably not very far.
Volvo is testing a similar pilot project in Sweden, but uses a powerful overhead connector to rapidly recharge batteries instead.
Volvo has also been piloting in-road, inductive charging for buses and trucks. Clearly, this is a big interest of Volvo leadership.
All of this is certainly something to keep an eye on. But I can’t help but feel like we won’t ever see something like this in the US… will we? Well, at least not for a few decades anyway.
Image Credit: Scania
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