Hybrid diesel buses coming to San Francisco
San Francisco is in the green auto news quite a bit lately (see our posts on their biodiesel emergency fleet here and their hybrid taxis here), and here's another way the city is making its public vehicles more green. The city announced last week that they have ordered 56 Orion VII hybrid diesel vehicles from DaimlerChrysler, and that they will have 86 of the buses driving through the city by 2007. The hybrid diesel buses run on diesel and battery power and will make up about half of the vehicles in American city fleets in about five years, as we posted about recently.
Mayor Gavin Newsom said San Francisco spent from 2001 to 2003 evaluating different alternative energy buses before ordering the Orion VIIs. "Our goal is to be 100 percent emission-free in municipal transportation by 2020," Newsom said in an article on CNET. CNET says that the Orion VII buses (4.5 miles per gallon) cost around $488,000 each, compared to about $260,000 for a standard diesel bus (3.5 miles per gallon).
[Source: CNET via NoonzWheels, Thanks to Alex Nunez]
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