E-VOLUTION

The chance to drive one of Australia’s first hydrogen fuel cell powered buses was too great an opportunity for us to pass up and while the logistics proved difficult the experience was enormously rewarding. Coach & Bus gets the chance to have the first media drive of the Hyzon BLK fuel cell bus, a bus we reckon will revolutionise the industry.

The coach standing in front of us is the first of the 44 hydrogen fuel cell buses ordered by Fortescue Mining Group to be put into service transporting workers around its extensive Pilbara Iron Ore operations around its Cloudbreak and Christmas Creek mines.

While the Fortescue hydrogen bus order has been public knowledge for some months, as it turned out it was really the tip of the hydrogen iceberg for the quirky WA based billionaire, Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest. Twiggy has since revealed massive and extremely ambitious plans to de carbonise the business that has made him a multi billionaire and to take a lead in pulling other businesses, Australia and the World toward a greener hydrogen economy.

Anyone who heard Forrest deliver this year’s Boyer lectures on the ABC will know his passion and commitment, to not only rid his businesses of carbon emissions but to establish operations that will help other companies do the same.

Since then of course Forrest has announced significant projects all around the country including hydrogen production facilities in Gladstone in Queensland and in Port Kembla in NSW as well as plans to create a value add ‘Green’ steel operation to turn the iron ore that comes from those Pilbara mines into steel using hydrogen rather than coking coal to fire the blast furnaces. Ambitious, yes, doable, definitely, and if there is anyone that can make it happen Twiggy is the man.

The bus standing in front of us looks pretty much the same as any BLK President Coach on the outside, save for the large Hyzon badge on the front just below the windscreen, and the signwriting on the shiny white sides of the sleek coach, explaining that the bus is powered by hydrogen and that zero emissions is the mission for BLK.

With a shiny polished bull bar fitted to protect its front in preparation for its deployment in the ‘wild west’ of the Pilbara, the Hyzon powered BLK President looks every bit the part of a 50 seat outback coach. Who knows in a few years similar buses could be used to shuttle tourists across our outback with a much softer footprint than the diesel powered buses that currently fill the roles.

Just to rule out any confusion, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are electrically driven with electric motors that are powered by batteries. There is nothing that is burned in terms of fuel, the hydrogen is fed into the fuel fell where its reaction with the anode creates electric current that is then used to charge the batteries. It is a complex yet simple and elegant solution.

What that of course means is that for any large vehicle travelling long distances there is no need to have massive banks of batteries to hold charge and to give the

bus the load carrying capacity and range to make it viable. For instance if you look at say Volvo’s FL Electric that was recently rolled out with Linfox here in Australia it has two battery packs that weigh 550kg each for a total of 1100kg weight, in a truck with a GVM of 16.5 tonnes overall. The Hyzon BLK hydrogen bus has four 141kw/h battery packs that weigh 221kg each in a vehicle that weighs 13.9 tonnes. While Volvo quote a range for the FL truck of just 200 km, the Hyzon BLK has a notional range of 700km with a hydrogen tank that weighs 26kg. So the Hydrogen bus has four times the range at around the overall same weight and can be refilled with hydrogen in a matter of moments.

There is no need to plug a hydrogen powered electric bus into an external power source, it generates all the electricity to keep that battery pack charged inside that compact fuel cell.

Yes, yes there is a lot to take in there and a lot of numbers to crunch that are a bit more complex than working out kilometres per litre and how many passengers you can carry but if you are doing more than 250 to 300 km a day or you are not coming back to a base or depot at the end of a shift then the simple equation is that hydrogen fuel cells are the future.

So here we were with the chance to drive this until now mythical, futuristic beast that a little while ago was as technologically exotic as a Saturn V rocket was in the late 1960s. But here it was and all of a sudden the future had arrived.

Walk on board and slip behind the wheel and you are faced with a fairly conventional looking dash and controls, at least superficially. Look a little closer and it is a lot more high tech than a traditional diesel powered coach.

Instead of an old style analogue display there is a quite sophisticated LED screen that delivers a whole lot of information to the driver.

There is still a speedo and odometer and surprisingly unlike other electric vehicles we have encountered, there is a tachometer, showing the speed of the electric motor which indicates up to 5000rpm. In the middle of the display there is a display that shows such things as battery charge, the level of hydrogen in the tank, remaining mileage and various battery and motor temperatures. There is also a display inside the speedo and tacho indicating air charge for the suspension. All very simple and extremely easy to read and use.

Press the start button, and there is no whir of the starter, no diesel firing up, no clatter from the engine compartment just an array of lights illuminated on the dash and some chimes. Once the ready light comes up the driver can select D for drive and away we go.

Like all electric vehicles the sheer joy of the electric dynamic is the unbridled torque

from start up. As you accelerate away from standstill there is just this silent surge of power that drives the bus down the road. Unlike an electric city bus with a low floor and sparse insulation with little concern for too much noise suppression, this BLK is a coach designed to cover longer distances on country roads and there is a lot more insulation. So this is even quieter than the electric city buses we have driven, in some ways similar to the difference between a diesel city bus and a diesel coach.

One could imagine that passengers would need to hold there voices down while conversing on board a hydrogen bus like this lest everyone on the hears their private chat.

With a range of around 700 km the hydrogen Hyzon BLK, is as we mentioned earlier an electric bus that runs primarily on its batteries. In fact without starting the fuel cell up, the bust could travel about 100km on the batteries alone. Switch the fuel cell on and it will keep the batteries topped up until you deplete the hydrogen. Of course the only emission from the fuel cell as it generates the vital electricity is water.

The other vital thing that makes the hydrogen generator such an important factor in future long distance heavy transport is the fact that the hydrogen fuel tank can be filled in a about the same time it takes to fuel a traditional diesel vehicle.

For those that instantly correlate hydrogen with the Hindenberg disaster in New Jersey in 1938 and worry about a disaster with a bus like this, then let us put your mind at rest. Firstly the Hindenberg used roughly 17 tonnes of hydrogen in a loose silk balloon as the gas used to lift the airship into the sky. As mentioned the Hyzon BLK has a tank that carries 26kg of hydrogen, in a secure tank not dissimilar to a tank used in LPG fuel vehicles. So fuel security is no more an issue than petrol or diesel powered vehicles today.

The quiet operation of the BLK Hyzon is almost unnerving , you can hear the wheels rolling on the road and because even the electric motors are way down the back on the rear axle, you can’t even hear the whir of those as you head down the road.

All too soon our short first drive of the BLK Hyzon fuel cell bus was over and we were left to try and comprehend al that we had experienced.

Driving a hydrogen bus today is something like the experience we had when pocket calculators first hit the scene, or personal computers and mobile phones. You realise this is the start of a revolution but you are not quite sure where it will take us. It is exciting, it is adventurous and it is the future and we feel very privileged to have experienced the revolution in its early stages.

All we can say is if this is the future, then bring it on.