A good TMS must also protect the battery from being damaged by collisions. Navistar, the parent company of IC Bus, said it has
addressed the issue of unwanted thermal events by selecting a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery with an altered chemistry made by a respected global man- ufacturer. Kelly White, Navistar’s director of eMobility business development, called LFP one of the safest bat- tery chemistries in the industry. She added the IC Bus Electric CE Series school bus
comes equipped with an active TMS that keeps the batter- ies at their optimal temperatures to ensure long life and optimal performance. Acknowledging the importance of the battery’s housing, “The high-voltage batteries are protected by a structural frame which has been impact tested to mitigate or prevent serious issues in the event of a collision with the school bus,” she explained. IC Bus’ LFP battery is made by Chinese company CAT,
which claims on its website that LFP batteries generally have a longer service life and higher thermal stabili- ty, even in the event of mechanical damage and/or a short-circuit, which makes the likelihood of a battery fire significantly lower. BYD, another electric bus and battery OEM headquar- tered in China, touts itself as being the world leader in
the EV industry and manufacturers of the “world’s safest battery,” also a LFP battery. While the company declined to comment on this article, Jason Yang, BYD’s director of business development, said last month at the STN EXPO Indianapolis in a video interview with Publisher Tony Corping that the Type D school bus will come standard with a fire suppression system. He added the system will immediately deploy when a crash occurs. Blue Bird currently uses an Xalt Energy NMC battery to
power its Electric Vision school bus, commented Britton Smith, the OEM’s vice president of electrification and chief strategy officer. But he added that the company is also touting the the mechanical improvements of CATL’s cell-to-pack technology, which he explained as being the direct integration of cells into a battery pack but without the modules used in most current pack designs. “These batteries are designed to produce more power than comparable storage systems,” Smith noted, adding the development of solid-state batteries also holds the promise of limiting the potential of thermal events. “A solid-state battery is reported to have higher en-
ergy density than a lithium-ion battery that uses liquid electrolyte solution,” said Smith. “It doesn’t have a risk of explosion or fire, so there is no need to have compo- nents for safety, thus saving more space.”
www.stnonline.com 39
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64
