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Guangzhou Armada Development and Guangzhou Yiqi Bus Co. to Purchase 207 Additional Eaton Hybrid Systems for Buses
9 April 2008
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| One of the first Foton-Eaton hybrid buses in Guangzhou in January. |
Guangzhou Armada Development Corporation and Guangzhou Yiqi Bus Company, Ltd. will purchase 207 additional diesel-electric hybrid power systems from Eaton Corporation for application in new buses in Guangzhou.
This purchase adds to the initial installation of 30 Eaton hybrid-powered buses announced in January. (Earlier post.) The buses will be placed into passenger service throughout the year. Once deployed, this will be the largest single placement of hybrid-powered buses in China. It is also Eaton’s largest single hybrid power systems order to date.
Operational results from the initial placement of buses, built by Beiqi Foton Bus Company, since January show that fuel consumption for the diesel-electric hybrid powered buses is nearly 60% less than that of the LPG-powered buses currently in service, with fuel cost savings of about 40%. The system also provides reductions in particulate and NOx emissions.
The Foton-Eaton buses combine a Euro-III compliant Cummins ISBe 5.9L diesel with Eaton’s medium-duty parallel hybrid drive system. Primary components of the hybrid system are the Hybrid Drive Unit (HDU), which combines a clutch, a 44 kW/420 Nm motor/generator and automatically controlled manual transmission; the motor inverter/controller; the DC/DC converter; and a 2 kWh li-ion battery pack from Hitachi. (Earlier post.)
Guangzhou Yiqi operates approximately half of the transit buses in Guangzhou, a city of 12 million people in China’s Guangdong province.
April 9, 2008 in China, Heavy-duty, Hybrids | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)
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Comments
This is a good looking bus and will show what diesel hybrids can really do. The 2 kWh li-ion battery pack will really get a work out in this application and provide some good data under real world stop and go high current usage.
Posted by: sjc | Apr 9, 2008 11:10:45 AM
sjc
Is a 2 Kwh Li-On pack large enough to supply meaningful power assist for a fairly large bus?
Would adding super caps complement and extend batteries life & maximize decelleration energy recouperation & give the bus a boost to get moving from frequent complete stops?
I presume that batteries-super caps combo will be tried on stop and start vehicles such as city buses, garbage trucks, taxi cabs etc An EEStor ESSU may be the ideal unit, if it makes it to the market place.
Posted by: Harvey D | Apr 9, 2008 11:35:02 AM
Caps and batteries are a good combination for now. As batteries advance, they may not be necessary. If you need 20x surge current for a 40kw motor, you can get that with these. If may seem a bit small, but they think it will work.
Posted by: sjc | Apr 9, 2008 11:45:18 AM
I am sure the battery pack needs a lot of cooling. Its going to get a workout every stop, probably near its capacity.
I bet within a year or two the Chinese will have copied the system and will no longer be ordering it from overseas.
Posted by: hampden wireless | Apr 9, 2008 5:19:11 PM
"Is a 2 Kwh Li-On pack large enough to supply meaningful power assist for a fairly large bus?"
Unless you use metal wheel and rail.
This pack probably will be good only for brake power recovery.
You need 20kw for 25 miles/h, 3kw for air drag and 17kw for rolling resistance on the bus.
Posted by: mki | Apr 9, 2008 5:19:14 PM
Brake power recovery is presumably what you are after in a bus. If you are grinding through stop-start traffic and bus stops, you will be doing a lot of braking, wasting a lot of energy.
If you can recover that, you are in business.
[ And if you can use the energy to get you started again (30 seconds later) ]
This applies to any vehicle that will be used with a lot of stopping.
Posted by: mahonj | Apr 10, 2008 3:16:52 AM
That is true. Each application has its optimal design. Start/Stop vehicles are good opportunities for this hybrid setup. They have no intention of powering the vehicle on electricity alone for any length of time. The gains are very good but as we all know, the bus fleets are not replaced in a short period of time. So we can hope that if this works, more of them will be used to replace older models.
Posted by: sjc | Apr 10, 2008 10:24:15 AM
I'd like to see some real world data about regenerative braking in a hybrid electric system. I have doubts about its applicability in slow vehicles like buses. To recharge a battery requires the voltage going in to be higher than that already in the battery. As the bus slows the voltage generated continually drops until it is zero when stopped. Below a certain speed regenerative braking is simply not practical and I doubt buses rarely exceed that minimum by a significant amount. This is where hydraulics has a big advantage.
Posted by: tom deplume | Apr 10, 2008 1:01:04 PM
