The hands of bus drivers in Dresden in Germany may well be shaking at the prospect of driving the city’s new unfeasibly long bus when it goes into service next month, but drive it they will.
At 30 meters (100 feet) in length, the vehicle is so long that one assumes on a particularly foggy day the driver will lose sight of the back of it. The bus, reportedly the longest ever made, can carry as many as 256 passengers, which could, at busy times of the day, result in some rather slow journeys with so many people wanting to get on and off at each stop.
Called the AutoTram Extra Grand Bus, the new $10 million electric vehicle can travel distances of up to eight kilometers on a single battery charge. A special on-board system that charges other batteries as the vehicle moves along enables it to cover greater distances with little problem.
Incredibly, no special license is required to drive the Extra Grand bus, though presumably a lengthy training course is needed.
Fraunhofer IVI, one of the companies that helped develop the vehicle, claims in a press release that thanks to its “secure electro-hydraulic actuator system….it can be maneuvered like a 12-meter bus both forward and [in] reverse.” One wonders if this will be enough to reassure Dresden bus drivers who must be wondering how they’re going to negotiate the various tight turns around the city. In other words, every turn in the city.
But Dresden isn’t the only city to get extremely big buses – Beijing and Hangzhou in China are also rolling out similarly sized vehicles this year.
London tried its luck a few years back with the so-called bendy bus – a vehicle two-thirds the length of the Dresden super-bendy affair – but decided to abandon it last year due to safety issues and claims that they encouraged fare dodgers. Hopefully the AutoTram Extra Grand Bus has a brighter future ahead of it.
WOW CE URIAS AUTOBUZ DIN GERMANY!
This bus uses ultracapacitors you can buy for $20 a farad so ironically it’s gamechanging technology is for bikes- fully regenerating braking unless AONE a123systems available at 99% off last years or next years price right now and more then that- another three quarters or more off if bought via existing options on nasdaq march of this year annual report is correct that there $15 ULTRA BATTERY (known affectionately as a silent B but otherwise BOOBY is less costly to own not just buy- you can buy three of them for the price of one 3 farad capacitor and thats’s about 50 watt hours so you do the equivalence to determine which is more energy ok- three farads or 50 watts- but I really don’t care if the little booby’s aone sells cost more then ultracapacitors already do because they use off the shelf integrated and commoditised parts so for the cost of a few dozen bikes I can build a few dozen bikes having to invest only a few hours interviewing some independent contractors to sign off on the robot code- i’ll code all the instructions I just need there insurance to get the robot owners to push the on button.
So then we have people in cars complaining at the bargain China is offering them to deny it’s people access to the open road but instead be packed like slow cooked sardines in one of those old vending machines that preheats hte food for months before you might vend it- yummy!
IN other words bus’s are for indigent people as are SUV’s for even more abusively enslaved. Real men ride recumbent trikes and can afford to pay there way even at 3rd world wages- or if we are really educated we walk without having todeal with crazy fucks paying off insane loans on fuel cells etc. to barely move there ass compared to us and not even enjoying the trip kill themselves and us by pooping exhuast in all directions as if surgically attached mouth to ass not just like that film- and I didnt’ the film tillnow but maybe if I had watched it I would of understood it was an analogy to motor city? TO giving our air to combustion so a few people name Fordand nissan and hte dynasty like our walmart but with different facial features and most of the asses on the planet but nodemocracy and hte death penalty for having an organ someone wealthier might need not just bullets if ther ebest and brightest get uppity evneif they are young and the people pushing the easy “fire” button are on deaths door.
I love transit- have fought for it my whole life- have never driven any car but owned many- and now am proud to have fuel cell road bikes and other toys like Leno laying around but enjoy my cloud racers on my feet right now having enjoyed the first waffle treads NIke came out with and loving showing the latest to mymom as they are like cotton candy only lighter in weight and faster then the grass in san diego ona adewy cool morning after a quick trip to mission bay from the dry heat with perky virgins complimenting me on my ass as I ran and run still like a quarter horse as NO one gets to tell me to strap myself in and sit for any number of miles shaving decades off my life and making money for peddlers of viagra all because I’m too stupid to pedal myself or think nanophosphate is not where true potency in the road of life and life on the road can be found.
This bus seems like it’d almost be counter-productive and incredibly slow in the real world? Did anyone take into account how it would affect traffic?
How does it make corners?
That’s what I’m dying to see.
30 meter is quite long, but not much longer than the 25 meter buses Gothenburg had since 2006.