On the importance of the gearbox

With the introduction of the new D13 litre engine in Eurpe and North America a new update of the I-shift gear-box was introduced. The new I-shift utilise a series of new energy saving features and improves the comfort simultaneously.

I-shift gear box

My colleague Claes Westberg is busy comparing fuel consumption for different buses. When the fuel consumption statistics for a large number of buses using the B12B chassis with the I-shift and with an automatic gear box are compared, the difference is clear. The I shift saves between 7% and 11% depending on speed. In the graph below shows both total speed (including all idle) and drive speed (average of all driving excluding idling) for the statistical selection of buses.

Diagram showing fuel consumption for B12B, coaches with I-Shift and automatic gear boxes.

A white Christmas

A traditional Swedish Christmas is spent with the family. This year I and my family visited my brother with family and parents at Kungshamn some 100 km North of where we live. Unlike most years nowadays, there was plenty of snow this year. It was cold and its still is.

Since new year the sea is frozen in the archipelago of Bohuslän. The out-door skating is excellent this winter and the winter scenery is spectacular.

I looked up the energy spending in Sweden. It is 83 000 kWh per household (in average of 2.2 persons) it corresponds to 14 tons of CO2 with the Swedish energy split. The major contributors to the energy use is:

Residential (mainly heating): 28%

Transports: 22%

Food: 19%

Recreation: 17%

Consumables, clothing, furniture, services, etc: 14%

Most of the energy is spent for heating the houses. The large and old Sweidsh car fleet takes the transport sector to a second position and the consumption of meat and fish takes the food consumption to the third place in energy use.