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July 13, 2015

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Home » Business » Autotalk Special

Volvo’s electric bus project eyes global influence

By Zi Chen | July 13, 2015, Monday | Print Edition

Volvo Group, which is running a trial on emission-free sustainable mobility in its headquarters in Gothenburg, hopes to gradually expand the public transport program to more regions, possibly including China, with an aim to set global industry standards for electric bus operations.

“There is certainly possible that we can expand the trial to more regions as long as we secure local partners who are willing to contribute to the project together with us,” said Hakan Agnevall, president of Volvo Buses, the bus operations of Volvo Group. “We hope the project could come to China one day, but we have to sort out several issues before we move in.”

Volvo is joining hands with partners including government agencies and research institutes in Sweden to develop an ElectriCity program in Gothenburg, which is a collaboration that develops, tests and demonstrates new, attractive sustainable collective transport for the future.

Under the ElectriCity initiative, Gothenburg launched its first route for electric buses on June 15. The three completely electrically driven buses and seven electric hybrid buses all come from Volvo Buses. The buses run on batteries that are quickly recharged with renewable electricity at the terminal stops.

The buses are silent and emission-free and run on electricity from wind power and hydropower. Among other things, passengers can recharge their phones onboard and enter and exit the bus from indoors.

According to Volvo, energy consumption of the electric bus is about 80 percent lower than that of corresponding diesel buses. Series production of all-electric Volvo buses is scheduled for 2017.

Currently, Volvo has a bus manufacturing joint venture, Shanghai Sunwin Bus Corp, with SAIC Motor Co in Shanghai.

Sunwin has already developed a type of overnight-charging electric bus, according to Agnevall. But bringing the ElectriCity project to China may need extra efforts, he said.

“As far as I am concerned, the Chinese authorities still prefer the overnight-charging system for electric buses,” said Agnevall. “In the ElectriCity project, we use ‘opportunity charging’ as buses are charged at terminal stops during short intervals. If we can see a shift in the charging mode in China and all parties are willing to contribute to the project, we are very happy to carry it on.”

Agnevall added that Volvo is satisfied with its cooperation with SAIC in China and doesn’t have an immediate plan to seek other Chinese partners for electric bus businesses in the world’s second-largest economy.

Talking about the challenges to move the electric-bus infrastructure to other regions, Agnevall said that the difficulty lies more in the management of facilities than technical issues.

“It takes much time to decide on a totally new mechanism on where to build charging facilities, how to secure the source of power and how to manage the operations in every single city,” said Agnevall.

“We hope to provide an integrated solution to simplify the procedures. We team up with global partners such as Siemens and ABB to set infrastructure in place to reduce the pressure on operators,” he added.

Agnevall said that Volvo also hopes to beef up its cooperation with research institutes on sustainable mobility. In China, it has close partnerships with Tongji University in Shanghai and Tsinghua University in Beijing.

“The Volvo Group aims to be the world leader in sustainable transport solutions. A unique collaborationin Gothenburg enables us to launch the electric bus route here and remain a leader in the development of future public transport,” said Niklas Gustafsson, chief sustainability officer, Volvo Group.

It is hoped that the ElectriCityproject will encourage use of public transport and prepare the way for more attractive public transport solutions in the VastraGotaland region.

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