Posted on 09/04/2009 2:47:39 AM PDT by kingattax
Kids in Napa won't hear the usual "clackety clack" of a diesel engine when district bus HY-2 lumbers up to their stop next month.
In fact, when the bus is sitting still, they won't hear anything at all.
Within a week or two, Napa Valley Unified School District will premiere one of the first small hybrid buses in the nation, thanks to state grants aimed at curbing school bus emissions and a transportation manager's aggressive campaign to green his fleet.
"I just got tired of seeing the commercials with the big puff of black smoke coming out of the tailpipe of school buses," said Ralph Knight, transportation supervisor for the 17,000-student school district.
Bus HY-2 is technically the second hybrid the district owns, but it is the first in California to use an engine similar to that of the Toyota Prius, which relies on both gasoline and electricity. The bus, which will carry children with special needs, will get an estimated 15 miles to the gallon, up from about 10 miles.
The district's first hybrid, a standard-size plug-in, was purchased in 2007 - the first, and until now, the only other hybrid school bus in use in California, according to state air regulators. It was one of only a handful produced through the work of a North Carolina nonprofit that promotes sustainable energy.
Officials at Collins Bus Corp., the South Hutchinson, Kan., firm that made HY-2, hope to find a broader audience for their hybrid.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Thank Gaia that there won’t be any more carbonaceous soot belching from that bus full of publik skool kids.
Unfortunately they’ll probably all catch cancer from the electro-magnetic fields generated by the huge batteries that are powering their greeniemobile but hey! At least they are saving the Earth!
“Napa bus will have engine similar to Prius’”
Make that plural: “engines”.
The Prius uses a Rube Goldberg nightmare of two engines taking turns moving the car.
"I just got tired of seeing the commercials with the big puff of black smoke coming out of the tailpipe of school buses," said Ralph Knight, transportation supervisor for the 17,000-student school district.
It’s been years since I’ve seen black smoke from the tailpipe of a city bus or truck here. I guess the mechanics finally learned how to properly set injectors. I seldom even see it from private trucks. When it does happen it stands out because it's so rare.
My company was the first company in the US to supply a hybrid drive for a bus (integrated into an Allison-built system).
Currently, municipalities that have hybrid buses have two of them:
One to show, and another to show when the first breaks down.
Just sayin’.
Isn’t that special ... a Pious screwool bus.
Read the rest of the article. It costs twice as much as a conventional screwool bus, and imagine the maintenance costs for this friggin thing as the miles pile up on it.
Ahhh, as Kalifornia goes broke, they stick to their goofball “principals”
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