The 28th of April the first 7700 hybrid was handed over to the local operator, Göteborgs Spårvägar, for in-use field testing. The testing is a part of the industrialisation step of the development. Historically, small series of profiling products have been supplied to demanding customers. The buses have had prototype status and were not intended for full scale production. This project is different. The field test buses are already produced in a fully industrialised manufacturing process. Both for the field test in Gothenburg and for London.
The bus key was handed over by Håkan Karlsson (Volvo Bus CEO) to Lena Malm (Göteborgs Spårvägar), supervised by Anneli Hultén,(Chairman of the local parliament) to the right.
Anneli Hultén spoke for the local public transport authority, Västtrafik, about the importance of clean public transports and the need for continuous progress. Göteborgs Spårvägar operates most of the buses in the city of Gothenburg. They have been pioneering gas buses. Now, they will lead the operation of the field test of the most energy efficient bus I have ever seen.
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I was given the task to give a guided tour where both the hybrid performance and local sighseeing was covered (the latter learned by mum in my early days).
It was great fun to guide the visitors in the first test ride with local drivers. As time goes increasingly remarkable data is released by the project. We have promised at least 20% fuel consumption improvement in typical Gothenburg operation. In parallell we promissed a reduction of at least 50% of emissions of NOx and particulates. We will keep our promise.
Environmental blog 