While busses are great when you live in the city and want to keep the number of vehicles on the road as low as possible, they require a lot of power to move and are run almost non-stop. Obviously this leaves room for improvements and we have seen many in the past year or two. Recently, Mercedes-Benz offered another solution to public transportation in the form of a Fuel Cell Hybrid bus.
How A Fuel Cell Works
The Citaro Fuel Cell Hybrid Bus is a part of Mercedes’ Overall Zero-Emission Plan, as well as Daimler’s Shaping Future Transportation program. The idea began back in the mid 1990s and evolved into a diesel-electric hybrid. From there, the plans were reviewed, revamped and resubmitted and eventually the Fuel Cell Hybrid Bus was born.
Electric motors drive each wheel and draw power from a stack of Lithium-Ion batteries. The fuel cell provides all the necessary power to run the bus and all of its supporting systems. According to Mercedes, the system will use a significantly less amount of hydrogen than similarly assembled fuel-cell systems. They also claim the bus is almost completely silent while operating.
The new design will be participating in a large scale fleet test that will take place in several larger cities in Europe. Currently, the design has logged over 2,000,000km over several years of testing. Once the fleet test is complete, the busses could very well enter production and begin replacing our tried-and-true diesel powered people movers.
Hydrogen Discoveries
