COVERSTORY
TRANSDEV E-MOBILITY
Selecting, building and running electric buses dayto-day is one thing, but unless the critical data behind what works and what doesn’t marries up to overall public transport success, you’d have to ask: what was the point? Transdev Australasia’s Aurora Project, in our region, aims to provide that answer.
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magine, if you will, that those high-school science classes where someone in your group would slyly fling extra metal stuff into the acidfilled beaker (true story), or eye drop excess ‘liquid x’ into a bubbling conical flask behind your back, didn’t require data collection at all. Sure the first few ‘snap, crackle and pops’ before the fire alarm goes off (might have been recess bell) while kids scramble for cover under desks screaming ‘Incoming!’ might look and sound impressive at first, but … what would it all mean without ‘data’? Somewhere in there, the ‘results’ and ‘conclusion’ part of any decent science experiment, trial or test overrides any foolish momentary euphoria of potentially the school closing down due to untold litigation cases from irate parents and maimed teachers and students. Experiments and trials only exist to test a theory and to draw a conclusion – for the greater good of mankind, one would imagine, or at least to get a Year 9 science grade higher than an ‘F’. Fortunately, the really clever students move on from the disheveled pack to enter career fields of discerning and accurate analysis, hopefully achieving a range aims and objectives that overcome problems and maximise performance potential for society. Public transport is no different - particularly with bus route planning and a raft of current environmental and safety requirements that encompass how bus product is purchased and run. In Australia, one of – if not the first – tests of a metro-route electric bus was spearheaded by Transdev Australasia in Melbourne, whose long-term plan to bring its e-mobility knowledge gleaned from European operations to Australian shores has successfully achieved many of its goals. And, perhaps more importantly, it generated the type of e-bus running data – involving chassis and body choice, charging infrastructure maximisation and implementation, battery performance and, in general, safe and timely PAX transportation – that provides insight and ‘learnings’ for the benefit of others during this electric vehicle (EV) transition. 32
ABC June 2021 busnews.com.au
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