Very large pure electric vehicles succeed

Pure electric vehicles are inevitably small and feeble or premium-priced, niche products like the Teslas? Not true. The mining industry has 350 kW pure electric ore trucks - see the IDTechEx report, Electric Vehicles for Construction, Agriculture and Mining 2015-2025. BYD has a 3.5 tonne heavy duty forklift for use where a hybrid or diesel forklift would have been used. Pure electric articulated buses now have range to 250 km.

 

IDTechEx report, Electric Buses 2015-2025 evaluates the new hybrid and pure electric buses. Pure electric bus leader BYD of China's Lancaster eBus drives 170+ miles with 120 passengers. 60 feet long, it runs 24 hours on a single charge and boasts a single off-peak charging time of 2-4 hours. The first pure-electric double-decker bus in the Chinese domestic market is the Ankai HFF6110GS03EV made in China. Launched back in 2012, it predates all pure electric articulated buses.

 

In Switzerland, the ABB TOSA articulated bus carries 120 passengers and its smaller battery is protected by supercapacitors as it receives a massive 400kW partial recharge in minutes at some bus stops. ABB proclaims, "more passengers, less battery". Polish manufacturer Solaris with Warsaw and Poznan Universities of Technology has developed a bi-articulated, 24-metre electric bus based on the new version of the Urbino family that had its world premiere at IAA exhibition in September 2014. The project end point will be a pure electric bus of over 20 metres in length like the APTS Phileas one from the Netherlands.

 

"Our objective is to create a completely emission-free means of urban transport. This bus could compete with a tram thanks to its unusually big passenger capacity. It is extremely challenging to provide a solution for the control of the bi-articulated vehicle which is designed to run on streets, not on rails. We are at the final stage of engineering works and soon we will move on to building a prototype which will subsequently go through a series of tests and evaluations," said Dr Dariusz Michalak, Deputy CEO of Solaris Bus & Coach S.A. There is nothing small, weak and feeble about affordable pure electric vehicles any more.