engine back through the drive line,” said Kris Hus, product manager for Freightliner Custom Chassis Corporation.


HHV IN SCHOOL BUSES? While HHV is currently being developed and tested for the com-


mercial market, school buses figure to be included on the HHV option list in the future. Tis spring, Ford partnered with the Geor- gia Institute of Technology and Atlanta Public Schools to build a hydraulic hybrid school bus. Te bus was donated by the district and rebuilt by engineers at Georgia Tech with funding from Ford. Currently, hydraulic hybrids are optimized for highway and stop-


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and-go driving, which will fit right in with the demands of modern school buses. It’s estimated the fuel savings will reach 25 to 35 per- cent thanks to HHV technology. According to the American School Bus Council, 480,000 school buses are operating in the U.S. and are logging 5.74 million miles annually using 822 million gallons of fuel. Fuel savings is a major concern for truck and bus fleet opera-


tors who have to budget every year for bulk fuel purchases and unpredictable prices throughout the year. HHV technology re- quires more components to run this type of system. Will this extra vehicle weight affect mpg?


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- David J. Brosky, Bosch Rexroth “Although the system adds approximately 1,500 pounds of


weight, the 35 to 70 percent increase in fuel economy easily off- sets the weight gain,” added Hus at Freightliner. More R&D is necessary to bring the technology to market for


other commercial trucks before a trickle-down effect may be re- alized for the school bus segment. With only several hundred hybrid school buses in service nationwide, both regular diesel- hybrids and plug-ins, demand will certainly need to catch up. But, as hydraulic hybrids show, the options will only increase for student transporters. Still, the future of transportation and hybrid hydraulic tech-


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40 School Transportation News Magazine August 2011


nology appears to be in very good hands with the EPA and private sector partners working together. Fuel efficiency and less reliance on import oil are two major concerns. While clean diesel is a mainstay right now, there remains little doubt the future will bring more developments with alternate fuels, more improve- ments on brake energy recovery, optimized engine controls and engine on-off strategies. ■


Whelan is a school bus and truck mechanic and shop foreman for the School District No. 73 transportation department in Kamloops, British Columbia.


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