Fuel consumption could be further reduced by adding more batteries. Doubling the batteries, to go from 7 Km up to 14+Km range would make it close to 100% electric in many cites.

With more batteries, the on-board ICE size could be further reduced?

Alternatively, the on-board ICE genset could be replaced with a lighter FC?

GP... you have to add the electricity consumed. However, it would still be more efficient than the ICE versions.

Electricity in Sweden doesn't come out of thin air, but ~94% of it does come from clean sources (57.5% RE + 36.2% nuke) so replacing the fuel use with electricity has a much bigger effect there than it would someplace where coal is still king.

Volvo Canada has been developing PHEV and BEV city buses for more than 2 1/2 years. The first operational units should be tested in up to 12 Quebec Province cities in late 2014 or early 2015.

All local city bus purchases would then (from 2015 onward) be either PHEVs and/or BEVs. The transition will take about 12 years.

I would add that the efficiency of this bus looks even better. Since it is cost competitive to produce diesel from pulp liquor in paper processing, and use cogen heat from coal or nuclear to do it, you have increased well-to-wheels energy loss avoidance. I speculate that the Thor Corp. plutonium/thorium reactor in Norway now initiated for a five year test could be the model for fuel cogen from timber. Plenty of timber in Scandanavia. Or use the chips to make methanol, which in diesel engines has as high an MPG as diesel, but virtually no emissions.

By the way, Norway has actually become a net importer of electricity despite those Norsk-Hydro dams, and has a lot of thorium.

I enjoyed Europe on a Volvo bus decades ago and can only support their absolutely excellent products.

Norway is one of the very largest contributors to CO2 releases, but it hides its releases by shipping methane and other petroleum to many other countries. A four foot diameter methane pipe goes to Germany or Holland.

Norway should immediately build several CANDU nuclear reactors and mix US "spent" fuel rod nonuranium actinides with 99 percent thorium to start operation. If just the remaining uranium from US "spent" fuel rods were made into CANDU fuel bundles they would have too much energy for now standard CANDU operation and it would have to be diluted with much thorium for standard operation as the Chinese have found out. The electricity can be sent to Germany to slow the deaths caused by breathing coal chemicals.

More people have been killed in wind turbine accidents than in nuclear reactor power plant failures. Not one person was killed by radiation after the Tsunami, but the fear mongering and relocations killed and will kill many. The natural potassium in every food organic or not, has long lived radioactivity in it.

It is too bad the world does not have a minor reactor failure in the Philippines to distract them from the thousands killed by water as was the case with tens of thousands in Japan. The death figures for oil production are only noted briefly except for platform sinkings but are much much larger than nuclear. Dam failures are very deadly and are the most dangerous. Coal mining has many disease deaths in addition to mining accidents and the public breathing chemicals from coal burning. Automotive fuel burning is a very large producer of death and disease.

It has been possible for over ten years to have plug in hybrid buses with clean operation by the use of ZEBRA batteries and turbines as shown on a bus builder website back then. A plug in bus, with first lead batteries and then ZEBRA batteries when the lead ones failed, delivered school children in California to their schools and home. It should have carried a small portable generator too; like a spare tire. ..HG..

HG...hand guns, machine guns and roads are very efficient killing machines (100,000/year) in USA. However, they can't match tobacco, junk foods, sweet drinks, pollution and man other man made industrial killers.

I have to agree with you that nuclear plants are no match for the above.

I have been working on this project for two years, so know it intimately.

The batteries on the bus are 28kWh, slightly larger than a Leaf. They use maybe only 8kWh on the run. The only reason it isn't 100% electric is that there are some steep hills on the route. This is a parallel hybrid, so the diesel turns on to help the electric motor up the hills.

This is an extremely flexible and robust solution to bus transport. Any combination of diesel and electricity can be used, depending on the route. And if there is a blackout or charger malfunction, then the bus keeps going. It also has a high passenger carrying capacity.

These buses are based on their high-volume 7900 hybrid bus, so prices should be quite reasonable. Expect to see this being a big sales winner for Volvo.

Japan is installing a lot of solar and is moving very rapidly toward a large offshore wind turbine industry.

On their windy, Pacific coast the water deepens quickly. Japan has been very aggressive in developing floating turbine bases. They now have two floating turbines on line.

There are Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridors being built. With dedicated lanes for buses this could become popular, more cost effective and less disruptive than light rail.

There are Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridors being built. With dedicated lanes for buses this could become popular, more cost effective and less disruptive than light rail.

This is debatable. Buses aren't the only things that can be given dedicated lanes. Streetcars, if given dedicated lanes, aren't disruptive either. And they have lower operating and maintenance costs & longer service lives so the total effective costs are better.

http://www.lightrailnow.org/

Autonomous e-buses, on dedicated lanes, could be very efficient and effective to move people in large cites and cheaper to install than subways and more esthetic than monorails and street cars?