A Canadian company has announced development of a new type of propulsion system for public transit busses.
The Winnipeg, Manitoba-based company, New Flyer Industries, is one of North America’s leading manufacturers of heavy duty busses.
The new concept involves batteries which drive the bus while a hydrogen fuel cell runs at a steady state to charge the battery drive. In addition, the bus will also recover braking energy to charge the batteries.
The fuel cell’s only exhaust is water as a result of hydrogen combining with oxygen from the air in the reaction inside the fuel cell.
Ballard Power Systems Inc., and Siemens are partners in the development. The hybrid bus on a bus that will be operated by Connecticut Transit (CTTransit) for 22 months of in-revenue-service operations. Ballard will supply a next-generation fuel cell power plant that is smaller, lighter and lower in cost than existing models
If the tests prove successful, the zero-emissions bus will be offered to transit systems in North America.
Earlier this year, the transit system in Montreal experimented with an electric bus from China. The results of that test in the spring have not been released yet.
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