Napa School District gets first PHEV school bus
Last week the Napa Unified School District in California received its first plug-in hybrid school bus. The bus was built by IC Corporation which is a subsidiary of Navistar and a major producer of school buses. The bus uses a parallel hybrid diesel electric powertrain produced by Enova. The electric motor is integrated into the transmission and is designed as a drop-in system that can be easily installed either by the bus manufacturer on the original assembly or retrofitted to existing buses.
Enova has developed two systems: a charge depleting plug-in system and a charge sustaining system. The latter uses smaller batteries and operates similarly to most current parallel hybrid systems. The plug-in system used on the Napa bus uses a larger battery system that can be charged from the grid and run down during the duty cycle of the bus. The plug-in system can get up to a ninety percent reduction in emissions and one hundred percent reduction in fuel consumption based on the duty cycle.
[Source: Enova Systems]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chris M 11:44PM (8/14/2007)
I don't know if that illustration is the plug-in hybrid bus, but that definitely isn't Napa, California. Come to think of it, that doesn't look like a schoolbus either!
Good idea, and the savings could be substantial. For some shorter bus routes an all-electric bus would be even better. Just think - two runs a day, with plenty of recharge time in between runs!
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Todd 10:51AM (8/15/2007)
But, that does look like a Napa Valley tourist walking by the bus. Maybe that's a wine-tour depating from San Francisco?
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