ILLUSTRATION - The ancestor of buses bottle, the company Oerlikon gyrobus used in Switzerland in the early 1950s. The electrical energy gained during the 70 second cooldown at every 2 km accumulated in a flywheel. The illustration is the cover page on the old journal Science and Mechanics April 1954.
As we have seen in my post on February 8, 2009 on the exhaustion of planetary resources, sustainable transport of people going by public transport much more developed today.
all-electric vehicles are ideal for the quality of life (no pollution and little noise). Already metros, trams and trolleybuses in operation in several cities. But the bus remains a very important component of urban transit. We see more and more battery-electric buses to appear as the small fleet of electric vans set up in Old Quebec in 2008, but their autonomy is limited to about 100 km due to the cost and weight of batteries.
With the advent of the batteries to recharge very Quick lithium titanate, since 2007, it is now possible to have electric buses bottle. These buses will be full of electricity at regular intervals along their journey , connecting to fast charging stations for less than a minute every 5 km.
The advantage of the opportunity charging is that son does not need air above the streets, as trolley buses, rail or as for the trams. The infrastructure cost is reduced accordingly, and the cost of batteries, since a range of about 20 km is sufficient. A system of electric buses booze also offers more flexibility because you can easily change course, which is not the case for trams or trolleybuses, which must follow their tracks to be supplied with electricity.
If we want to increase the capacity of a transit bus system and near the tram, you just have buses in dedicated lanes where not available to other vehicles. This is the concept of busway, more and more popular as cheaper than the tram. The city of Nantes in France, among others, just install a very popular line in November 2006. The current busways using conventional articulated buses (120 passengers per train) running diesel or natural gax. The next logical step would be for electrical busways bottle.
The principle of opportunity charging is not new. He was tried in Switzerland in the early 1950s with the gyrobus , built by Oerlikon (illustration at the beginning of this post). At that time, there was obviously no quick charging batteries as long today. The energy storage system used was a flywheel rotated fast (3000 rpm)..
Moreover, the Swiss company Numexia currently developing small autonomous electric vehicles booze (5 seconds to recharge regularly spaced positions) for the transit of passengers, without drivers (shown below) . The system will be installed in Switzerland, the site of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in 2010 and will serve a term of 4.6 km. It will use 30 small vehicles and 15 rapid charging stations without contact. This transport system has been innovative presented to the television Channel Nouvo TSR in Switzerland.
In California, the company Proterra just introduced in February 2009 its all-electric buses EcoRide BE35 (shown below) that can travel 50 km to 60 km on one charge of its battery lithium titanate Altairnano . The battery can be recharged in less than 10 minutes with high power charger also sold by Proterra. The bus is also available as a plug-in hybrid, while giving the same autonomy than traditional buses. is a very interesting intermediate step before the actual electric buses booze.
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