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Ladies and gentlemen, feast your eyes on the ECO Saver IV! By the end of the year, five of these 42-foot-long hybrid electric babies will be rolled out by NYC Transit, which may purchase as many as 80 if they perform as good as they look. As you can see here, the sleek design is accentuated by a front windshield which curves upward into a smile of blissful environmental friendliness. The Eco Saver IV's electric motor is powered by a battery pack, which is charged by a turbine engine, and Joseph Smith, NYC Transit's bus chief, tells the Daily News, "It's so quiet you don't even know it's running."
Because the smiley bus can run on battery power, it has zero emissions 20% of the time. And James Gaspard, the VP of the company that designed it (DesignLine), points out that "most of the parts that go bad on a regular bus don't exist on this bus." Those non-existent parts include the transmission, alternator, starter and water pump. Your move, non-smiling double decker bus.
Below, more details on the ECO Saver IV's specifications for the transit aficionados out there:
Design Line Hybrid Electric Turbine Bus Features and Specifications
- The bus is powered by a 30KW Turbine that produces AC Power to feed nominal 600 Volt DC batteries
- Uses GAIA Lithium Ion Batteries
- Has two 3 Phase AC Bosch Motors
- The turbine rotates at 96,00RPM on air bearings
- It weighs 30,640 lbs
- It seats 35 or 37 depending on the configuration with 30 standees
- Its expected to attain mileage comparable to our current hybrids
- Has efficient LED Lighting System by Pretoria
- Electrically operated Air Compressor by Hydrovane, Power Steering Pump by Vickers and Lift- U Wheelchair Ramp
- Unitized Electrically Operated Air Conditioning Unit by Sutrak with Sealed Copeland Scroll Compressors
- Has Knorr-Bremse Disc Brakes, ZF Axles and Suspension
- Bus was built in Charlotte, North Carolina
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Ah, now there's a familiar sight.
"NOT IN SERVICE"
"The turbine rotates at 96,00RPM on air bearings." Now that's sexy.
but can it fly?
The M11 line has a few of these new buses.
Let's play a game. It's called How Long Do You Think It Will Take Before Some Dumbass Gets Creamed By One Of These Because He Isn't Paying Attention And His Family Sues The City and MTA Because The Bus Doesn't Make Enough Noise To Let People Know It's Coming.
Begin!
Silent Buses - Are Our Children Safe In A Post-Noisy Bus World?
what they need is some aesthetic noise that will warn people... i'm thinking something that sounds like a ufo whirrrrrrl. they have something similar for deer if you live in the mountains, right?
How come they couldn't redesign the inside? Whose idea was it to upholster the seats with electric blue velveteen anyhow? How about something that's cleanable? Have you ever sat on one of these things? They're all crusted with all kinds of dried mystery fluids. Blech!
the media has a big boner for hybrids but the truth is they are still big polluters. electric vehicles put ever more strain on an already over-extended electrical grid. and where does the major percentage of electricity still come from? coal fired plants.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epm_sum.html
This is not a plugin hybrid, the batteries are charged by a diesel turbine.
Also, they get better gas mileage than conventional engined buses, but they are significantly more expensive to purchase and repair.
And if you want to talk about the environmental footprint of the raw materials used to build these things (and dispose of the massive batteries when they die), it's not pretty.
MTA and the politicians love to push their hybrid initiatives, but in reality it is only a feel-good concept. The environmental and economic effects don't benefit anyone other than the people who build them. The technology just isn't there yet.
thanks for the response. the diesel turbine is even worse than i imagined, so much for "emission free."
i really believe that solar, more than any other "green" technology is our way forward. but only if we can figure an economical way to harness it's power directly or by steam generation as spain has experimented with:
http://solarcellsinfo.com/blog/archives/1807
the diesel turbine is even worse than i imagined, so much for "emission free."
As stated above, zero emissions 20% of the time. And it's a series hybrid, meaning that the engine never directly propels the vehicle (as it does in most hybrids, like the Prius) so it can use a smaller engine. Overall fuel use is said to be 50% that of a typical diesel bus.
In addition to recharging from the turbine engine, these buses also use regenerative braking (and by the way, some "plug-in" charging is done, to maintain property charge levels and maximize battery use). The engine can use low-sulphur diesel, CNG, LNG, or LPG. The bus can optionally be equipped with a more traditional 4-cylinder diesel engine instead of the turbine.
The manufacturer's website:
http://www.designlineinternational.com/electrichybrid.cfm?subpage=273520
Since these are diesel engines, can we retrofit them to use recycled fry grease that pours out of fast food joints every night in the city??? Manhattan alone has like fifty kazillion restaurants that have fryers!
"an we retrofit them to use recycled fry grease that pours out of fast food joints every night in the city"
Seriously, other than the technical problems involving storage and delivery, that probably could be done. The buses use Capstone MicroTurbine engines, which are used at places like waste treatment plants and industrial plants to power generators using bio-gas or other waste as fuel.
Thanks jay, always the informative commenter.
Batteries don't get disposed. They get recycled. Furthermore, hybrid and electric vehicle development is driving battery technology, leading to greater efficiencies.
I don't know of any data on hybrid buses, but hybrid cars are cheaper to own. Consumer Reports recently ranked the Prius as the best overall value.
Not to be cynical, but knowing New York City bus drivers (who admittedly put up with a hell of a lot of crap on a daily basis), maybe it is better if our buses make noise so that we hear them for a few seconds before they hit us.
Honestly I find that MTA bus drivers are probably the safest vehicles on the road most of the time. Never had a problem with them as a pedestrian, cyclist, or motorist.
"It's so quiet you don't even know it's running."
Pedestrians are so getting mowed down.
MTA bringing back the straps and strings.
Very cool post. Thanks for putting this up...
Re: getting creamed cause you don't hear the bus coming -- won't be just because you're a dumbass. Advocates for the blind have raised similar concerns about hybrid cars.
And to anyone who thinks bus drivers are categorically safer has never tried to ride up 1st or down 2nd on the right side of the avenue competing with the accordion-bus-driving assholes of the M15. If you're not more endangered by them as a cyclist or pedestrian, it's only because the buses are so often caged in gridlock.
Some advocates for the blind have raised the concern. Yet there is not one documented case of a hybrid vehicle and pedestrian collision due to lack of noise.
The idea that a blind person can identify a car 2 feet away and not confuse it with the one 5 feet away (and countless others) seems quite dubious. But that's just my bullshit guess. I have no experience being blind.
Good good, I'm happy to see less toxicity and less noise.
Thanks for the post! Love your site, its superb like Argentinians.
Gov. Sanford's mistress? Is that you?
Quiet yes, at least in theory. A large portion of the observable noise of the current fleet comes from the suspension system of our so called "kneeling" buses when they kneel down, that and the ever present squealing belts driving the air conditioning compressors and other various accessories on the bus.
The greatest crime committed by present and this future bus is their exemption from axle weight limitations. These buses continue to shake our houses and tear up our roads - notice how the roadway at all bus stops are currently constructed of concrete to mitigate this problem if you don't believe me. What are the true economics in allowing this bus and all other buses exemption from weight regulations? The initial cost of a slightly cheaper bus vs. the higher long term cost of repairing the damage incurred - who is benefiting here? The cost is always borne by the consumer anyway.
Vehicle manufacturers don't make things heavy on purpose. You would essentially ban buses. Yeah, that's gonna work.
A lot of cities in the US and the world have zero-emissions busses that run attached to overhead cables-- something like that would do a lot more to clean the city's air in New York, even if the actual pollution is more or less outsourced
My thoughts exactly!
Ugh. It's too easy.
Someone finally created a bus that looks as smug as the eco-nuts putting them on the road!
/No really, this is great.
//I feel ill.
How does a bus look smug?
you know, on the zero emissions front, when you burn hydrogen, you get water. Hydrogen burns at a known and predicatable rate unlike petrolium products because it is a single element, and not a soup of dead dinosaur parts (even when refined into gasoline and diesel, it still burns relatively inconsistantly). BMW converted one of their standard Gasoline engine cars to burn hydrogen (the only change was the storage system for the hydrogen, the engine itself was a stock Gasoline engine), and they got something like 50 or 75 more horse power out of it for just that reason.
There is a guy in iceland that designed a geo thermal power plant that would produce from one site, enough hydrogen to power the U.S. and Europe's electricity and transportation energy needs, and there are 7 geo thermal sites that size or bigger in north america. (i really wish i could find the link for this, my buddy from college who is now a NASA fellow, filled me in, but i haven't found the actual journal article he read yet.)
Now if someone could figure out how to make a tankful of hydrogen not explode violently in a collision, we could get on with the gettin on.
what say we all put our thinking caps on, figure out the technology, and turn big oil into medium hydrogen?
/begin flames
you all seem to know a lot about the nyc buses; i'd appreciate your help. what is the weight and braking distance of a nycta tandem bus? thanks for any help.