Hybrid Bus Project

As Western Washington University’s Hybrid Bus Project is in its last year of a three-year grant from the Federal Transit Administration, Professor Steven Fleishman and The Hybrid Bus Team are getting close to designing a hybrid bus.

Fleishman has been working on the project since 2007, three years before the Department of Transportation awarded Western Washington University the grant to build the hybrid bus. From the beginning the plan has been to build a 24-foot hybrid bus called a proof-of-concept vehicle that would carry around 15 passengers. The proof-of-concept vehicle will be a prototype that 16 transit groups involved can use for their own production of hybrid buses. 

“What we are looking at is a proof-of-concept vehicle and to demonstrate it for our initial transit groups,” Fleishman said.

The team is a collaboration of students, volunteers and faculty who are working to complete the proof-of-concept vehicle by September 2013. Drew Wohlenhaus, who is a senior at WWU, volunteers full time for the project. He said that he is a hands-on worker and decided to join the team when they needed more assembly line work to be done. He is one of the many Vehicle Design students from WWU who are involved in the project.

Students in Fleishman’s classes used CATIA, Computer Aided Three-Dimensional Interactive Application, to design the seats of the bus. If the vehicle passes the Federal Transit Administration certification test, Fleishman says he thinks the bus will be used for specialized transportation for people who are unable to ride the bus due to mental or physical disability. All the seats of the bus, besides the back four seats, fold up for wheelchair access. 

The structure of the bus is made almost entirely of Twintex, which is a type of plastic that is a glass-reinforced polypropylene. Fleishman said that Twintex has never been used on hybrid buses before. In a manufacturing economics class students studied what material would be the most cost efficient for the bus. The students found that Twintex is the most cost effective for the hybrid bus. The Hybrid Bus Team is using a battery pack from a Toyota Prius, parts from a GM truck, and the diesel engine is from a 2-L Volkswagen Jetta.

In January the Whatcom Transportation Authority released a fleet of eight new hybrid buses that go on all the routes in Whatcom County besides the 80X to Mount Vernon. 

WTA Director of Fleet and Facilities Pete Stark said that the buses are quieter than most hybrid buses and they will last up to around 15 years. The new buses are 40 feet long and they are true hybrids that constantly run on electricity. Like The Hybrid Bus Project, the WTA was awarded a grant by the Federal Government.

“The policy goal is to provide more fuel efficient and environmentally more benign vehicles like hybrid buses compared to conventional buses,” Bellingham City Council Member and WTA Board Member Jack Weiss said. 

Jack Weiss said hybrid buses are highly expensive without having a grant to purchase them.

“The only reason why we were able to get these eight (buses) is because we were able to get additional grant funding from the Federal Government that assisted us in purchasing those,” Weiss said. 

Even though it’s still too early to tell which manufacturers will build the Hybrid Bus Project’s buses, Fleishman can see the bus being commercialized.

“We thought of taking the same basic structure of the bus and then using it as a shuttle bus for airports or taxis or even emergency response vehicles,” Fleishman said. 

Fleishman said that they would want to provide the different types of commercial buses with the same fuel efficiency and structural integrity. He also sees the potential danger of releasing the proof-of-concept vehicle too early to commercial manufacturers. He said other manufacturers of hybrid buses have put their hybrid bus out in the market too early and failed.