Solar-Powered Plug-in Hybrid School Busses!

[bennelson]

Hey Everyone,

The cat is out of the bag! The nation's largest fleet of plug-in hybrid school busses is in the state of Wisconsin, about 6 miles from my house!

I helped out at the dedication and ribbon cutting.

The local news station had some coverage. I can't figure out how to embed it here, but HERES A LINK to the video news article.

[gasstingy]

Getting a hybrid school bus fleet is a great idea, as much as they are stopped loading and unloading children. I'd wanted to watch the video, but the link didn't work for me.

[euromodder]

Link should work now :

HERES A LINK to the video news article.

[euromodder]

They work on diesel up to 25 mph, then switch to batteries for higher speeds
That's the opposite of car hybrids, and would mean the ICE is working in its worst operating environment, i.e. stop & go traffic , rather than to sustain a higher speed

[bennelson]

I caught that backwards speed thing in the video too.

I think that might just be that the TV station got it wrong? They accidentally swapped the faster than/slower than?

Apparently, these busses actually ARE very quiet when then run in EV mode. The other thing is that they are plug-in "battery-depleting" hybrids - they run as a hybrid until the pack runs out, then they revert to regular diesel mode.
They DON'T have regenerative braking, I'm not sure why, most likely a technical cost vs. performance reason.

Also, all the hybrids are specifically used on the city routes, where they are most useful. The standard busses are used on the more rural routes.

[RobertSmalls]

Regen would be particularly useful on the city routes, where hybrid transit buses get something like 5mpg instead of 3mpg.