Vehicles

Passenger Cars

Clean municipal fleets (Stockholm)

The technologies used in the vehicles are based on bi-fuel (bio gas and petrol), flexi fuel (ethanol and petrol), electric and electric-hybrid. The used technologies have been functioning well. No major problems have occurred. The fuel-cell technique is not yet available commercially for cars in Sweden.
   

Clean municipal fleets (Lille)

Electric vehicles
The electric vehicle brings a real change in the way of driving and its positive impact on the population is obvious. But its use imposes a rather rigorous management of the loading of the batteries.
The principal observations are:
• Too weak autonomy
• Too long time of refill (6 to 7 hours)
• Low reliability of the system of additional heating
• The majority of the electric vehicles of LMCU being shared among several different drivers, we were confronted with the problem of memory effect of the batteries what caused several time the expensive replacement of the sets of batteries (5500 €) and the replacement of two engines.
   
Natural gas vehicles
The natural gas vehicles answered well the needs for use of our park. Except some problems of development and engine tuning at the beginning.
   
   
   

Buses

Biogas bus fleets

Biogas buses are available on the market as current technology.
   

Biodiesel bus fleets

Old buses:

• Exchange of fuel hoses and gaskets
• Check of all parts supplied with bio-diesel (heaters)
• Certification from the engine manufacturer
• Consent from the producer of the injection pump

All the other busses of the fleet are from a new technical generation.

• They are suitable for bio-diesel fuel / bio-diesel heating
• 52 of them have got air conditioning

Clean and efficient heavy vehicles

Heavy vehicles

All of the clean heavy vehicles bought in the framework of our project use bio gas as fuel produced at local production plants. Bio gas is by far the cleanest alternative fuel on the market and decreased noise and harmful emissions. The vehicles have been functioning well and no specific problem has occurred. Using bio gas as fuel for buses and lorries seems to be a good solution for transports in city centers.
   

Biogas waste collection vehicles

The tendering process has been more expensive than for the conventional vehicles.
   

Experiences from the drivers

The vehicles function better than conventional ones concerning emissions and smell. Functions less well concerning reach per refueling (and need per days work) and acceleration.
   
Different opinions are present concerning change of noise levels. 3 claims improvement, 2 claims no change and one worse performance concerning noise. The drivers consider the functions of comfort in passenger seat, drivers comfort, driving egenskaper, safety, speed and reduction of speed equally well performed as for conventional vehicles.
   
Too few refuelling stations but the existing ones work well.
The majority of the drivers think clean vehicles is a good environmental effort. 6 waste collection vehicles have driven 141 328 km and consumed 91582 Nm3 biogas.
   
For more information se Evaluation Report WP12
   

 Published2005-01-20

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Technology

Introduction

Traffic Management

Vehicles

Fuels

Information system