Volvo 7900 Articulated Hybrid will save at least 30% of fuel

A humble confession:
When the Volvo 7700 Hybrid was introduced in 2010 we were all nervous. Introducing a hybrid bus in the middle of the worst recession since the 1930:s. Still, the sales exceeded the forecasts and we were all taken by surprise. The experience and the success has given us the strength to continue the development.

When we started the planning for the 18 meter articulated hybrid bus, different alternatives were considered. One option included using the new 5.1 liter 240 Hp diesel engine with two batteries and an upgraded 150 kW electrical motor (the 7900 12 meter hybrid has a 120 kW electric motor). 

I was skeptical. Historically, I have more frequently been accused of supporting too wildly. This time however, no doubt, I argued for a stronger diesel engine in order to secure sufficient drive ability and performance.

Some colleagues argued that the experience of the rightsizing of the D5 engine for the 12 meter version of the 7900 Hybrid turned out to be one of the reasons for the success. In addition, a second battery increased the energy storage by 100%, the power of the electrical machine was boosted by 15% and the torque was increased by 50%  while the weight was increased by 35% when going from 12 meters to 18 meter articulated. The concept was evaluated together with a number of selected alternatives.

Soon it turned out I was wrong. The new concept will be excellent and even preferred for at least 70% of the city bus routes in Europe. The reasons for the progress are: the highly efficient right sized diesel engine will provide a baseline for the efficiency. Further savings are realized by: the brake energy recuperation, the idle shut down at bus stops, electrification of steering servo, air compressor, climate control and the new electric doors and finally by utilizing the I-shift gear box. Together at least 30% fuel savings relative the corresponding articulated diesel bus are confirmed.

Considering that the articulated buses already have a higher efficiency per passenger the achievement is truly excellent. I expect the pay-back time to be even shorter than for the 12m version of the 7900 Hybrid. We need to come back with more detailed data on different types of routes when we are ready.

Volvo 7900 Articulated Hybrid is the most recent family member in our Volvo hybrid range

The articulated hybrid bus has a very high passenger capacity. The bus in the picture, with double glazed windows, 2+2+2+2 doors and three climate systems is specified for 151 passengers.

When the hybrid bus arrives at the bus stop the engine is shut down to avoid idling, this saves fuels and local emissions. As for the 12m hybrid we have secured that the bus can start from most bus stops in electric mode in order to avoid leaving an emission cloud behind.

Long distance love

Last week, I visited the transportation conference (Stora Transportdagen; #storadag13) in Stockholm. The event was followed by opinion leaders, transport industry representatives and lots of other stakeholders.

Johan Norberg (researcher in the history of ideas and culture) held an interesting speech (yes, a speech and not a presentation) about the importance of travel. I will not have a chance to give justice to his vivid and engaged presentation. However some of the thoughts are translated below:
“long distance love used to be an endangered species, modern travel has opened new possibilities”. It used to be said that long distance love is doomed to fail. Today people meet and make new connections as never before in history.

Research has shown that the fact that people meet and get acquainted achieves many advantages:
i) Less risk for conflicts and negative time and resource consuming activities such as wars.
ii) High potential of cross pollination and mutual learning, such as pottery or IC circuit manufacturing.
iii) High potential of increased trade and resulting access to “new” resources such as Platinum for emission car catalysts or cotton for clothing.
Or to summarize, humans get smarter and more efficient by more meetings with other people from other places than we usually loop.

At the conference I got the opportunity to make a 10 minute summary of the breakthrough in electromobility for buses.

Main concerns in most cities around the globe include insufficient focus at:
- Noise
- Fuel consumption / Energy use
- Transport efficiency / Speed and Capacity

Additional attention also needs to be pointed towards (although some positive steps have been taken):
- Low or Zero Emissions
- Green House Gases
- Renewable energy

Buses that run in city traffic in general follow “bur routs”. This means that the path is predictable. Volvo is now proposing a path that will lower the energy use radically, lower the noise and still provide an enabler for increase capacity and rout speed.

I will leave you with this teaser for now and continue the story in my next post.

 

New Legends

The legendary Greyhound buses are doing well. Greyhound is nowadays present in many countries and in the US the interest for bus rides are growing again after some tough years. And it’s growing fast.

The travelers today have higher demands on comfort and convenience. WiFi and possibilities to charge the surf pads and note books are requested. Many take the opportunity to rest while travelling rather than driving themselves, as frequently was the case in the past. The time has come to invest in the attractiveness.
 

Prevost X3-45 high profile coaches to Greyhound

Prevost has been contracted to supply the X3-45 high profile coaches to Greyhound. Android and I-Phone users can download the Prevost Tools App that offers lots of information of everything from the location of the next workshop to the merchandise sales. What about a Prevost Golf Shirt for a birthday present?

No doubt the Prevost engine technology is the leader in fuel consumption in the segment.

First Volvo 7900 Hybrids delivered in Benelux

The hybrid interest is growing rapidely in Europe. A few weeks ago Volvo delivered the first BeNeLux 7900 Hybrid buses to the City of Luxemburg (AVL). The buses are painted in the new eye catching color scheme of the city.

 

Volvo 7900 hybrids in Luxemburg’s eye catching color scheme

Luxemburg private operator Sales-Lentz was pioneering the Volvo hybrid technology already in 2009. It is now one of the leading cities with a total of 25 hybrid buses. The buses are split on the three operators Sales-Lentz, AVL and Weber.

The new buses have double glazed windows to support a pleasant climate in the bus. The 7900 is another 500 kg lighter than the predecessor, which in turn already was the market leading hybrid also in terms of weight. The Volvo Hybrid buses are the only hybrids on the European market that deliver the fuel savings that are claimed. Under favorable conditions savings of up to 39% are reported relative to Euro V diesel buses. In mixed city and regional operation the buses are expected to save 25 to 30% fuel relative to the corresponding diesel buses.

However, the most striking benefit is the silent electrical start that saves bistros, restaurants and people living close to bus stops from noise and emission clouds from the take-off from the bus stops. Depending on battery status and topographic conditions most starts will be electrical starts.

Megacity dilemma

All megacities have one thing in common: challenges posed by the transport of people and goods. Unlike most cities that “just” struggle with noise, city smog, energy use, emissions of greenhouse gases and the cost for the transports, megacities face severe shortage of road and other infrastructure for transports.

Mostly the street space is consumed first for cars and buses, and rail is built for tram and trains. Next, underground rail is built for metro lines and in some cities elevated rail or skyways are used. Criticism is pointed towards the unattractive environment for the travelers in underground “piping”. And, for public transports above the ground citizens living close to the major transport channels are disturbed.

Megacities constantly run into capacity problems for their transports. Eduardo Paes (mayor of Rio de Janeiro) describes the dilemma in “The four Commandments of Cities”  on TED talk from 2012.

I learned from another Latin American mayor recently that one of the main priorities is to plan the city for a minimum of transports. Cities that rely on lots of traveling for many people sooner get into congestion issues than cities that are structured to minimize the need for travel. In Hong Kong for example most people walk to work. The city allows people to live close to offices. In other cities, where shopping centra, business districts, residential areas and industrial parks are well separated by considerable distances, public and private transports are required.

However, even when care is taken to minimize the need for transport, a lot of travelling will be required. For those cities the efficient use of the street space is of high importance.

Common structures to cope with high capacity travel are:
1) Grids of mega corridors of roads or rails
2) Multiple ring roads/metro
3) Integrated roads for car, bus, bike and walking*
4) Local availability (in each city district as well as in each suburb) of fundamental functions of society, such as shops, banks, drug stores, etc.

* For example as described here by Tender S.U.R.E.

For all public transports some common factors are crucial for efficient transports in megacities.
In fact, many less developed cities in the industrialized world still struggle with basic priority issues, in contrary to rapidly developing cities utilizing modern knowledge on transports of people and gods.

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems are used in several mega cities

 
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems are used in several megacities. Some of the basics include:
1) High average speed is a necessity for high transport capacity
2) Rapid boarding is required
3) The driver should focus on driving alone, ticketing and similar should be done in other ways
4) Direct door-to-door travel minimize capacity issues for major transport centra
5) High frequency of the service attract more passengers
6) Routs with higher capacity requirement shall have priority over transports with lower capacity

In the end the capacity of different public transports is a subject of political decisions, alone.

New EU guidelines

EU has launched new guidelines for financial incentives to promote Energy efficient vehicles (Regulation (EC) No 715/2007).

In 2009 EU presented a directive for promoting “clean and energy efficient road transport vehicles” (Directive 2009/33/EC). The directive gives a scale for the environmental cost for society. The spirit was to harmonize the environmental definition in Europe in order to realize a critical mass of environmentally sane vehicles (rather than having lots of local definitions with diverging demand).

Figure: When applying the directive (Directive 2009/33/EC) to Volvo buses the environmental cost for society is as pictured.

The new regulation takes off from cars, however the directive now state:
“Guidelines for all vehicles encompassing incentives granted in all forms
Guidelines will be applicable to cars, vans, buses, trucks as well as two- and three-wheelers and quadricycles.”

If a European country is to apply incentives for environmentally sane technology the same scale applies as for the directive from 2009.
The logical consequence is that the value for society is roughly €95 000 and society benefit €140 000 from introducing a plug-in hybrid relative a diesel bus.
The environmental cost for introducing gas or biogas buses is higher than for diesel, due to the significantly higher energy use.

Now, the new regulation (Regulation (EC) No 715/2007)  gives a common scale for incentives and funding of environmental buses in the future.

The Volvo Bus decision not to offer diesel buses without hybridization in the low floor city segment for Euro VI is thus logical from an environmental standpoint.

Saving fuel, down under

Recently the first Volvo Hybrid was delivered to Australia. The transport ministry in Western Australia, Perth, is interested in environmental performance, noise and fuel savings. The Volvo B5RH (that we internally also call the “Global Hybrid”) has been equipped with a body built in aluminum, by the local body builder Volgren.

 

Robyn Thomson, Volvo Bus Asia-Pacific, hands over the keys to the minister for transport Western Australia, Troy Buswell.

 

The Volvo Hybrids have an in-house parallel drive train that has gained rumor of having higher reliability than diesel engines. The high fuel saving of the hybrid sister from Europe the 7900 Hybrid is contrasting other accessible low floor buses on the market. The saving relative to a comparable diesel bus has by independent evaluators been benchmarked to 35%. Volvo Bus is now very eager to follow the performance of the low entry hybrid in Perth as there is limited experience from very hot markets.

The climate is challenging but we have positive experience from deliveries to Mexico and Spain. We are now securing the technology step-by-step. If fuel savings can be confirmed and achieved without sacrificing the comfort and climate the hybrid buses will have a bright future also in Australia.

Solar cells gaining terrain

When I was 10 years old, I got an electronic kit for Christmas. There was an instruction how to build radio receivers, radio transmitters and other electronic constructions that were most exciting to build. The one component attracting most of my interest was the photovoltaic cell. It was advertised to give an impressive 1% efficiency. The cell of some 2×5 cm should thus theoretically be able to produce about 1W. My home build radio transmitter could go on transmitting day after day without any external input of energy, except for the daylight. I was amazed.

In recent years the photovoltaic cells have progressed; they are more efficient and much less costly. Today, research has shown cost efficient solar cells of more than 10% efficiency. Research cells are close to 50% efficiency as recently reported by NRL .

Biomass is growing in the fields using photosynthesis with just a few pro-mill efficiency. If solar cells now have 50-100% more efficient land-use for energy harvesting one may challenge the established thought that sustainable energy should mainly come from wind mills and biomass.

100 x 100 m of solar cells equal the energy production of 1000 x 1000 m energy forest.

As I reported last summer, solar cells and motion sensors are utilized to light up bus stops in remote locations in the Swedish archipelago. I say, this is just the beginning of sane commercial use. Which exciting use of solar cells can you imagine to support public transports?

Noise of concern

When the hybrid buses were introduced on route 60 in Göteborg, Sweden last summer we bragged about the low noise (3 dB less). The reaction did not wait, after a few days two noise complaints were registered from citizens living close to one of the bus stops. Obviously, we had raised the expectations too much.

A passenger survey showed that 86% of the passengers found the new buses less noisy and the remaining 16% did not notice any difference. A measurement performed at the critical bus stops showed in average even less than the “theoretical” 3 dB from the drive-by measurement.

No doubt, the hybrid buses make a substantial contribution to less noise in the city environment.

European union works hard on decreasing the noise in our cities. An excellent starting point is gathering data and comparing. For anyone interested in statistics I recommend you look into this data base: http://www.eea.europa.eu//themes/noise/dc)

You can also contribute yourself by downloading the NoiseWatch (http://watch.eyeonearth.org/ ) app to your smart phone. Measure inside the bus, tram or train and report it. When you are finished you can review the result at “Eye-on-earth”.

One thing seems clear; actions are needed and increased focus on noise is expected.

Hybrids for Denmark

The 7th of January one of the first fleets of Volvo 7900 Hybrid was taken into service in Kolding in Denmark.

I had the opportunity to say a few words about the environmental performance. The new hybrid buses will significantly reduce the environmental impact relative to the main environmental alternative gas (CNG):
+50% less fuel consumption
+significantly less Noise
+50% less total environmental impact (including energy, CO2, NOx and particulates according to 2009/33/EC)

Mayor of Kolding, Jörn Pedersen, during the inauguration ceremony.

We had a ride through the city of Kolding in one of the buses that was decorated with numerous Danish flags (Dannebrogen, which is considered to be the oldest national flag in the world stemming from 1219). There was a brisk wind and some fog in the air. The hybrid showed off for the day with a long electric drive when leaving the railway station. The electric start, which will give relief to citizens living close to bus stops, was demonstrated at several occasions.

The new hybrid buses were introduced in a partnership between the operator Tide, Volvo Bus, City of Kolding and Sydtrafik.