THE FLEXI-BUS. AN ENERGY SAVING AND NON-POLLUTANT BUS TECHNOLOGY

The study has been carried out by a flexi bus group at the national board for technical development (stu). The starting-point of the group has been the fact that traffic with electric buses has many advantages over diesel buses. Of the disadvantages higher costs and less flexibility are the major ones. The group claims to have found an unusually successful solution to the problems of the flexi bus technique. The first two chapters are devoted to a comparison between the electric bus and the diesel bus and to a survey of how the electric bus has been and is used in Sweden and abroad. The flexi bus is flexible as to the choice of primary energy source. It is also flexible in its design, ie it can be built with a battery of different size depending on the need for driving without an overhead line. The flexi bus can be looked upon in two ways: (1) a trolley bus having less need for contact lines and expensive rectifier power stations; (2) a battery bus which does not have to visit a special battery charging station. In the last chapter an attempt is made at estimating the cost of flexi bus traffic in Stockholm City. With today's prices it will be somewhat more expensive than traffic with diesel buses. (TRRL)