Launching the green baby

This time everything was different. With the coach of the year 2008 nomination and record sales in Germany behind us and the hybrid launch in front of us, the Volvo team arrived full of confidence.

Last IAA, a lot of our energy was absorbed by meeting false arguments by some competitors concerning the technology choice for Euro IV and Euro V. During the passed two years Volvo and others, that have chosen the SCR technology, have been given right on one point after the other. This was not least confirmed by that even the most EGR oriented bus manufacturers now shift to SCR, quietly, engine by engine.

Håkan Karlsson, the President of Volvo Bus Corporation, Maurice Brown, our city bus product manager and Stefan Nordström, Senior Vice President for our European Business, contributed to the launch. They were also the once naming it the “green baby”. The press conference was crowned by the launch of the hybrid. We claim that the new Volvo 7700 Hybrid is the first commercially viable hybrid:

Read more about the new hybrid bus here

We had more visits than ever: customers, journalist, suppliers and competitors competed in crowding the baby.

Journalists wanted to know why the Volvo hybrid was more commercially viable than others: Because of the very high fuel savings combined with competitive cost.

Customers wanted know how much fuel consumption they could save in their specific cycles: It can be estimated for any cycle where we know the change of speed end height.

Competitors wished us good luck and crawled around the bus to register all data details.

Suppliers wanted to know if they could buy the Volvo in-house key components to fit with their products.

 The interior of the green baby is here displayed by Mr. Bath for honoured guests from SBS Singapore, Mr. Poh and Mr. Pang.

International visit

Last Friday we were visited by a group of international delegates from all over the world. The visit was arranged by the Swedish metrological institute and was a part of a training programme for planning of future society and transports.

Our colleague, Peter Danielsson, knowledgeable in both environmental matters and high capacity transport systems, hosted the meeting.

A lot of questions were raised about future sustainable fuels and specifically about the competition with food.

The worries concerned both the fact that the people suffering the most from high food prices are not the same person as the once that can gain from increased prices for agricultural products. And, in addition the regions suffering the most are big net importers of food.

 The group outside the Conference Centre

New way-s-election!

Last week Gothenburg promote sustainable mobility. It goes under the name “Nya Vägval”, wich in Swedish has a double meaning similar to the title above. The objective is to get car users trying new transport alternatives; going with a colleague, trying the tram or taking the bike. For some, this is what they do everyday,- a good choice. The initiative was taken by the local authorities in Gothenburg and supported by industry and other employers.

I went by bike last Tuesday and came home in the evening totally exhausted and rich on new traffic experiences. Going to work by bike is different from using it for training. My GPS revealed a stop time, at crossings and red lights of 14 minutes. This is three times longer stops than when I use the car.

On Thursday I went by bus. This time I arrived 10 minutes ahead of the official rout planer information, in both directions! Last time I went by bus, a couple of weeks ago, I lost 30 minutes by coming too late to the last connection.

However today, a total travel time of slightly more than one hour is quite OK considering that the shortest possible driving time by car is about 30 minutes. Although, it is longer than the magic limit that applies to most people. If the public transport is 50% slower than car we still may consider taking the public transport but if its 100% slower we rarely consider it. For us, people working with buses, it should be mandatory to use the local public transport every now and then. The everyday travel gives quite another viewpoint than the professional test clinics.

 

 

Ebbe Östebo from product development department, here on his bike, is our health coach as well as one of the promoters of “New way-s-election”.

 

Volvo Bus Corporation scored among the top 10% in participation ratio. And, in absolute numbers we were among the top 5%. We cut off as #1 within the Volvo group, if you disregard some micro daughter companies with less than 20 people.

 

Our top management gained a lot of respect within the company. Some of our Senior Vice Presidents challenged their respective teams and our CEO, Håkan Karlsson, went in the fore front.

 

It was a great success!

 

Me as a gift to the former Prime Minister

I never pictured myself as a gift. Even if my contribution certainly was not the centre of the show, still I became a part of the celebration of former Prime Minister of Sweden, Göran Persson, given by the Social democratic party. The gift was an international climate conference: “Our Climate –invest in the future”. The conference was inaugurated by present leader of the Social Democratic party, Mona Sahlin and by Ylva Thörn, chairman of the workers union “Komunal” of Sweden. Stefan Edman, biologist, author and climate adviser was our host and moderator the full day.

Majora Carter, funder of Sustainable South Bronx, started out and gave one of the most inspired presentations of the day and considering the competition, this was an excellent performance. The message was that if we invest in people we also invest in the local environment. By giving trust and by having high expectations, self-belief is gained and great results are achieved.

In Majoras case it all begun when she went jogging with her dog Zena, that led her to a place she never visited before. The first project was to clear the dumping area and to convert it to a beautiful park at the waterfront. The neighbourhood grew confidence and the engagement of the people living in the area led to decreased crime rate better reputation and even local investments.

 

 

Majora Carter and Stefan Edman

 

Then a first panel of presentations followed:

 

Ricardo Lagos, former president of Chile, UN General Secretary special messenger in climate issues presented the background and urgency of the situation.

 

Sergei Mironov, Chariman of the Russian parliament, gave a broad review of the potential developments that we may have in front of us. It was not quite clear to me if he actually meant that the green house gases does not contribute to global warming or that he meant that the variation of the sunlight was a more severe problem.

 

(There have been some confusing press in Sweden on this matter recently so let me come back to it in the blog within shortly. It should be made completely clear to every one that there is no doubt what so ever that increased concentrations of green house gases increases the temperature in the atmosphere when subjected to radiation from the sun.)

 

Guy Ryder, general secretary of the international union organisations, said that change is required but it can not be left to the market. In addition new attitudes will be needed and we should have understanding for the needs of developing countries. He exemplified with the new low priced Tata car. (I understand that many that speaks about the new Tata does not know that Tata already, since long time, is a large manufacturer of low priced cars in India and that the new car is a new model with even lower pricing than the other cars in the series.)

 

Åsa Westlund from the European Parliament gave a picture of the work towards new legislation for sustainable fuels and the energy directive. Obviously the European car industry is not prepared to lower the fuel consumption further and conservative and liberal parliamentarians support the automotive industry while the socialists have more focus on lowering the green house gases.

 

After a short coffee break a second panel was introduced including: Ylva Thörn, Anneli Hultén (chairman in the climate council of the Social Democratic Party), Svante Axelsson (general secretary of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation) and I.

 

We had a vivid discussion and debate about the transportation sector, fuels, food, nuclear power, infrastructure and all sorts of issues that is a part of the climate debate in Sweden. While I have spent some efforts contributing to the debate in other parts of the world this active contribution to the Swedish debate was new for me. I had prepared a couple of sentences before the meeting intending to get the top three priorities through. The discussion however turned out quite differently, which was good for the audience.

 

Stefan Edman skilfully led the discussion to industrial contributions to the green house gas abatement. The high capacity buses, the hybrid buses and the Volvo environmental work were covered. To my surprise it does not seem to be as evident in Sweden as in the rest of the world that alternative fuels should not be allowed to compete with food in order to avoid famine. Even if Anneli clearly explained the dependence of starving people on low food prices the conclusion did not seem to be fully supported by all. My top priority was to explain the need for long term decisions with broad support from all political parties as we need to make investments that should pay off in 20 years time.

 

 

Göran Persson directly after the meeting

Göran Persson held the most engaged speak of the day. He expressed his sincere worries about the lack of pace, the wait and see mentality. He walked from the changes in every day’s life to the scary effects on exposed groups of pore woundable people. He talked 40 minutes without interruptions in an excellently enjoyable demonstration of rhetoric. It is clear that climate change is an issue that still is of great concern for our former Prime Minister and that he intends to pursue the work on the international arena. An instrument or institution will be needed to intensify the work towards harmonisation. 

 

Excellent hybrid buses in Montreal

I went directly from Ireland to visit our Nova bus colleagues in Montreal or, to be accurate, in St. Eustache.

The morning jogging went up the Mont Royal, named by Jacques Cartier the 2nd of October 1535 as he was guided there by Hochelaga Indians. The mountain in turn gave name to the city (Montreal) that later grew next to the lake St-Louis. The climb was breathtaking and so was the panorama that attracted quite a number of visitors already 6.30 in the morning.

Before lunch I got the opportunity to visit STM the establishment operating the buses in the Montreal area.

It is of particular interest for me to follow the development of our Nova bus hybrids and their performance in Montreal dense traffic conditions.

After lunch I visited the Nova Bus Plant with Jean-Pierre Baracat, (Nova VP). We discussed life cycle environmental analysis and priorities of material selection, emissions, fuel consumption and other prioritised areas. Nova buses are built on a self carrying body, I.e. there is no chassis. This gives a very stable and durable construction that brings a series of advantages. Before leaving, I had a ride with the 40 foot version of the hybrid. The take-off, noise and gear shifting quality of the drive train doubtlessly is impressive.

 Nova Low Floor city bus, here in an air port shuttle application.

Belfast, Controlling Emissions

The 5th International Conference on Environmental Catalysis (5th ICEC) is being held in Belfast, Ireland. I got the honour to give a plenary lecture to give an introduction of the automotive section.

In the research community a great deal of attention is put on understanding and improving emission control technology further. Even small improvements in catalyst technology have large impact on system cost and thus on competitiveness of the different vehicle technology solutions. As a prominent example, there has been a major improvement of the stability of zeolite catalysts for abatement of NOx by Urea SCR technology. Both copper and iron zeolites are now in commercial use.

In the ideal case industry would prefer to decompose NOx without using a reducing agent. The decomposition however is still too slow also on the most active materials to allow commercial use. As the second most preferred solution many researchers turn to diesel fuel as a reducing agent. In Europe, Åbo Akademi made a lot of progress a couple of years ago. The preparation method for manufacturing was however considered a complication. I was glad to learn, at 5th ICEC, that further research progress was reported by several research groups. Possibly, the silver alumina catalyst is not dead after all?

Another presentation, made by Akira Obuchi, warmed my heart. A heat exchanger was used as a substrate for NOx reduction catalysts. This is a technology that we have been evaluating at Volvo, which now eventually made it to the research arena. This is hopefully a step towards commercialisation.

The organiser Robbie Burch in front of the Lanyon Building of Queens University

The conference is turning out to be a tribute to Robbie Burch that has announced his retirement for next year. I believe it when I see it, everybody know that researchers never retire completely. For the conference he has certainly managed to gather a large number of the leading scientist and I would not be surprised if this will become one of those legendary meetings the gave birth to many new ideas.

As always, I went jogging in the morning. Last time I was in Belfast some six years ago there was still some tension in the air. Now, it was all gone, one of those beautiful mornings, and you could feel this would be a nice place to live in. Running along the Lagan River, took me to the city centre. There is construction work going on everywhere, as in most places that flourish. And, traffic congestion problems follows…

 Most of the new double decker buses I saw were built by Wrightbus on Volvo Chassis.