Fisher Coachworks

December 1, 2008

Rapid Shift to Fuel-Saving Hybrid Buses Is Reportedly Underway in United States

In Troy, Michigan, engineers are reportedly tweaking what they believe to be the public transit vehicle of the future: a super-lightweight hybrid bus.

The GTB-40 (right) is made of a high-strength steel that will last longer than most bus frames. Its builder, Fisher Coachworks, says the chassis allows it to zip along with half the weight of its peers.

And, its hybrid-electric engine not only consumes less fuel, but also stores electric energy whenever a driver hits the brakes.

The result is a bus that gets 10 miles per gallon--if you convert its battery power to diesel equivalents, that is.

But the average diesel bus--the dominant vehicle in public transit--gets just over 3 miles to the gallon, so the new mpg number has city transit agencies taking note, the subscription news service ClimateWire reported today. Battered by fuel prices and hoping to spruce up their environmental records, they are buying more and more hybrid buses to run everyday routes.

Compared to the tens of thousands of diesel buses already in service, the hybrids are few. In most places, they haven't graduated from pilot projects. But they're at the front of a trend that's been building since early this decade. In 1995, according to the American Public Transportation Association, only 6 percent of buses ran on anything other than straight diesel or gasoline. In 2007, that number had risen to 22 percent, ClimateWire reported.

"They're all prototypes. None are really final in the sense that they're out on the road in any type of mass," Lurae Stuart, an alternative-fuels analyst with the American Public Transportation Association, told ClimateWire. "But that's still a rapid change for a technology."