Electric Buses for Melbourne

[SWB5105KGP-3]

I had a ride on a Parallel Hybrid bus on route 902. I noticed that it's semi automatic transmission during the mechanical transmission stage (After electric motor gives the bus some boost from standstill), with no torque output for approx. half a second during the gear shift. This is the same with all the PH buses I rode in China. I've never come across a PH bus with full automatic transmission. Is there technical limitation necessitating the use of semi automatic transmission? Does it pose danger when torque is suddenly lost on a curve?

[red_railway]

Saw a fully electric bus running route 527 on Bell Street. So the rollout at Ventura Ivanhoe seems to be kicking in.

[1whoknows]

That will be the original electric bus - the other new ones were still at Volgren as of last weekend.

[Linto63]

If these were the BYDs numbered 156x and 157x, about 8 were at Ventura’s Dandenong depot this week.

[1whoknows]

Good to hear they're on the move. I gather there's to be some sort of launch. I'd expect that to be done by Jacinta after Dan gets back from his hols.

[ron12]

Hi. I'm new to this forum and not involved with the bus industry so this is my opinion only, but I have an suggestion on how you could electrify a long suburban bus route such as the 901 from Frankston to Melbourne airport over a distance of around 115 Km.

An electric bus could probably make one round trip and possibly another trip one way before it had to recharge for a few hours. However, if there was catenary charging along the way, it should be able to make it through a whole day without having to spend hours recharging.

Suppose you installed the catenary chargers at major stops, e.g. train stations, shopping centres and at the airport. These would be an average of 9 Km or so apart, though some would be as close as 3 Km (e.g. Frankston station to Kananook station) while the greatest distance would be 19 Km (e.g. Kananook station to Dandenong station).

A bus would only need to spend about two minutes at these stops to recharge. While that wouldn't be enough to recharge fully for longer spans, it would be more than enough for shorter spans, so that any shortfalls after some spans would be made up for after other spans. The recharge time at stops could be reduced further if the bus also did some recharging overnight. Thus you could have electric buses on a 115 Km route.

Would this be viable?

[tonyp]

Hi. I'm new to this forum and not involved with the bus industry so this is my opinion only, but I have an suggestion on how you could electrify a long suburban bus route such as the 901 from Frankston to Melbourne airport over a distance of around 115 Km.

An electric bus could probably make one round trip and possibly another trip one way before it had to recharge for a few hours. However, if there was catenary charging along the way, it should be able to make it through a whole day without having to spend hours recharging.

Suppose you installed the catenary chargers at major stops, e.g. train stations, shopping centres and at the airport. These would be an average of 9 Km or so apart, though some would be as close as 3 Km (e.g. Frankston station to Kananook station) while the greatest distance would be 19 Km (e.g. Kananook station to Dandenong station).

A bus would only need to spend about two minutes at these stops to recharge. While that wouldn't be enough to recharge fully for longer spans, it would be more than enough for shorter spans, so that any shortfalls after some spans would be made up for after other spans. The recharge time at stops could be reduced further if the bus also did some recharging overnight. Thus you could have electric buses on a 115 Km route.

Would this be viable?

This is what they do in Europe, not only for range, but to reduce the weight of batteries on board so that they can maximise the passenger capacity. The more batteries a bus has to carry, the lower its passenger capacity. Adding more gear onto a bus adds to its cost, so these solutions involving overhead collection are more commonly applied to high capacity buses (arctics and double deckers) where more benefit is to be obtained through the higher passenger capacity.

Two types of collection are used in Europe - dynamic in-motion charging through trolleypoles and static opportunity charging through a pantograph at a charging point at a stop (typically but not always a terminus). The latter technology has already arrived in Australia via the double-articulated buses to be introduced on the Brisbane busways. There's a bit more downtime with opportunity charging and it costs a bit more than the trolleywire method, but both are cheaper than battery buses and have higher passenger capacity.

This tech will come to Australia for artics and deckers anyway because they're too heavy to run any viable distance on overnight charging batteries alone.

[ron12]

They are testing this on the 601 bus route between Huntingdale station and Monash Uni. That's only a short route though but very frequent buses and heavily used during uni terms.

[PaxInfo]

Hi. I'm new to this forum and not involved with the bus industry so this is my opinion only, but I have an suggestion on how you could electrify a long suburban bus route such as the 901 from Frankston to Melbourne airport over a distance of around 115 Km.

Would this be viable?

I wouldn't go to the trouble.

The 901 is an enormously long route that should be split into at least 2 or 3 sections. It currently has sections that are under serviced while its semi-rural portion is over-serviced. There are also overlaps with other routes in sections and its frequency currently rarely harmonises with trains it is supposed to feed.

The main case where you may need to consider arrangements for long routes include examples like the (infrequent) 684 or V/Line coaches to places like South Gippsland.

[tonyp]

They are testing this on the 601 bus route between Huntingdale station and Monash Uni. That's only a short route though but very frequent buses and heavily used during uni terms.

What are they testing on 601?

[1whoknows]

A recharger (like a petrol pump) has been installed at the 601 Monash Uni terminus so the electric bus can receive 2-3 minute recharges between trips. Seems like a silly way to do it when the overhead panto style works well in Europe but I guess ya gotta start somewhere. I was going to go there and have a look at it this week but have been bitten by the covid bug.

[tonyp]

A recharger (like a petrol pump) has been installed at the 601 Monash Uni terminus so the electric bus can receive 2-3 minute recharges between trips. Seems like a silly way to do it when the overhead panto style works well in Europe but I guess ya gotta start somewhere. I was going to go there and have a look at it this week but have been bitten by the covid bug.

For a 12.5 metre battery-electric bus? That's not necessary, they should run all day on the overnight charge. Opportunity charging is typically only needed for artics and double deckers. What type of bus is being used on the route? I thought they were diesel artics.

[tonyp]

I think I've answered my own question:

https://www.busnews.com.au/industry-new ... transition

So, looking at the timetable, I can see that the average battery electric bus currently operating in Australia should be able to comfortably run this operation all day on the overnight charge, without topping up. So, either they're being overly cautious, or there's some issue with the range of the Volvos. Given the intensity of the service, I'm surprised it's not run entirely by artics, like the very similar 333 Bondi service in Sydney. Battery rigid buses have very restricted passenger capacity (about 60 pax) because of their weight and it must be very costly to run so many buses when fewer artics would do the same job more comfortably.

[Merc1107]

So, either they're being overly cautious, or there's some issue with the range of the Volvos.

Without knowing anything about the route in question, it's hard to say. Speaking hypothetically though, would an electric's range be severely compromised on very intensive stop/go routes where the opportunity for regenerative braking is quite limited because of low speed?

[tonyp]

Without knowing anything about the route in question, it's hard to say. Speaking hypothetically though, would an electric's range be severely compromised on very intensive stop/go routes where the opportunity for regenerative braking is quite limited because of low speed?

The route profile is very similar to the Blue Emu service at Sydney Airport which is run with BYD electrics that run all day to my knowledge. The route length is the same and both routes basically flat, with similar opportunities for accelerating and decelerating.

[1whoknows]

The Monash Uni bus is CDC 186 a Volvo BZL. Its a short "no in between stops" run from Huntingdale Station - only 4-5 minutes each way. The run also has an artic and several 601 branded rigids - the latter increasingly sighted on other routes in recent times.

[Linto63]

First of 8, with 3 minute headways and a round trip time of 20 minutes, route 601 would have a peak requirement of 6-7 buses.

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