Scania has announced it has delivered its first 100 per cent battery electric bus in Australia delivering the first one to South Australia’s Department for Infrastructure and Transport in South Australia, which will soon be put into service in Adelaide.
Manfred Streit, managing director of Scania Australia said the company was delighted to place the bus into the hands of our DIT operator partners.
“This delivery marks a key milestone for Scania Buses and Coaches in Australia. It is a tangible first step on the road to a transformational public transport future, and one that Scania is very much pushing for wider adoption,”Streit said.
“Globally Scania has been working on transitioning to a zero tailpipe bus solution for many years and we have several cities in Europe already well advanced in their integration of Scania’s 100 per cent battery power buses into their fleets,” he said.
Scania’s director of sales for Bus and Power Solutions, Julian Gurney, said that the company sees no reason why route bus operators in Australia cannot follow suit.
“Our buses provide quiet, clean and safe transport,” said Gurney
“The Scania BEV solution has proven to be a significant step forward in terms of performance as seen in pre-delivery testing in real world conditions,” he said.
“The testing was undertaken on routes around Adelaide and the BEV bus, loaded with several tonnes of ballast to simulate passengers, coped admirably with the terrain, the congestion and the distances required for a full day’s work.
“As a result we feel very confident that this offering to the market will prove to be a very readily accepted solution, and one that can play a major role driving down urban exhaust and noise pollution,” Gurney said.
The first Scania BEV bus was imported from Scania in Sweden in component form and assembled by Bustech in Adelaide, Bustech then built a version of its existing VST body, modified for electric propulsion, dubbed VST-E onto the chassis.
The 12.5 m body seats 41 plus driver with room for nine standees. There are also two wheelchair positions within the saloon.
The Scania New Bus Generation introduces a completely new and simple-to-use electro-pneumatic park brake, with multiple built-in safety features, which include removing the possibility of bus roll-away.
A new instrument cluster is sited within the new lower and even more ergonomic dashboard, complete with ventilation outlets to ensure drivers are able to tune the temperature of their workstation to their personal taste.
The instrument cluster displays important range and battery state information. The power display situated on the right of the cluster helps the driver to drive the bus as efficiently as possible. When lifting off the throttle, brake energy recovery is activated, and the regeneration effort is displayed via the blue part of the scale. During acceleration, the level of energy that the motor is taking from the batteries is shown on the right part of the scale in the green zone.
At the rear of the vehicle, under the hatch, in place of the traditional internal combustion engine are four battery stacks, while a further six are mounted on the roof. They allow the Scania BEV bus to have a working range of around 280 km on a single charge, and have a working life of up to 10 years, depending on driving conditions and operating environment.
At the rear, the electric machine and gearbox are installed on the curb side. Being compact in dimensions, the motor/gearbox cluster allows for plenty of battery placement at the rear over the axle, allowing a good counterweight to the passengers inside.
The electric machine is used for both propulsion and reversing the vehicle, as well as for regeneration of kinetic energy during braking, and is mated directly to the two-speed transmission. To reverse the bus, the electronic controls spin the motor in the opposite direction.
Through the brake energy recovery function, the propulsion batteries take advantage of and store the kinetic energy generated by braking during driving. This is particularly effective in inner-city stop-start traffic.
The energy stored in the batteries is then returned to the system when needed, through the energy return function.
The electric propulsion unit has its own oil system where an electric oil pump is located on the housing of the electric machine. The system is primarily used for cooling purposes.
Peak electric machine power is 300 kW, with 250 kW available for continuous use. Each battery is rated at 33 kW/h for a total of 330 kW/h. Maximum torque is a very generous 2100 Nm. Acceleration velocity is limited for passenger comfort, and top speed is also limited to 85 km/h.
A universal CCS2 charger is mounted on the driver’s side of the bus externally close to the front wheel and allows 130 kW charging. As such the batteries can be fully charged in around 90 minutes. The flat floor compatible chassis uses a portal drive axle at the rear with a 6.19:1 ratio.
“Scania very much welcomes the arrival of the first 100% fully electric bus to our portfolio and to the DIT route bus fleet for Adelaide. This is a momentous day for all of the people involved in the programme, and we look forward to adding further examples of this technology to the Australian operating environment in the very near future,” Gurney said.
