The MT Position

Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit magazine editor

Transit is flush with new federal funding, much of which is being spent on hybrid energy solutions. But what if I told you that you could be running your same hybrid buses far cheaper with an almost inexhaustible energy supply — one that wouldn’t mean a complete system overhaul. Sounds interesting doesn’t it?

The numbers are out and as a nation we’re driving less, which comes as no surprise since the vehicle miles traveled (VMT) has been on the decline for more than a year now. Of course, with gas prices dipping down less than $2 a gallon in most places it is interesting that VMT are still on the decline. And transit continues to rise with a four percent increase in ridership throughout 2008.

People are riding transit more than ever before and — surprise, surprise — they are finding out that once they have a taste for it they like it. Is it really low gas prices sustaining America’s “car culture” or is it simply the lack of available transit?

For those of you out there looking to spend your stimulus dollars wisely to increase transit in your area, you may want to keep your eye on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Researchers there may have found the solution to putting hybrid buses in every fleet in the country — batteries that recharge in seconds.

A recent report in the scientific journal Nature discusses a new application of an existing material that makes lithium ion batteries much more efficient. What the researchers found was that the ions traveling through standard lithium and cobalt rechargeable batteries travel through “channels” in the material and must be lined up properly to be transferred.

By switching to a lithium iron phosphate compound, they found the ions were guided to the channels much quicker than in standard batteries. In a test they were able to charge a lithium iron phosphate battery in 20 seconds, the same amount it took a standard battery six minutes to charge.

The lithium iron phosphate batteries didn’t store as much energy as lithium cobalt batteries, but they retained the ability to charge longer, which means lithium iron phosphate batteries could be made smaller and lighter than existing lithium ion ones.

Spin this out to your buses for a second. Now you have lighter, smaller, quicker-charging batteries in your hybrid vehicles. Combine this with the regenerative shocks I talked about a few weeks ago and you have a whole new paradigm for hybrid vehicles.

Transit is the perfect place for this technology. And now is the time when we need to impress upon our government officials to spend some money making sure this research gets funded and into the hands of the general public. Now that’s a real stimulus!

Check out Mass Transit’s new Top 40 Under 40 promotion on our Web site. We’re looking to recognize transit’s best and brightest under the age of 40 in an upcoming issue. Click on the link and you can read more about it and nominate yourself or any of your colleagues.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
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This entry was posted on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 8:13 am and is filed under MT Position. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.