Sometime at the end of 2017 Go Auto, a company better known as the distributor for Haval vehicles in Malaysia, announced that it was planning to launch fully electric buses here in Malaysia. The electric bus venture is part of their Joint Venture arrangement with Higer Bus Company Ltd and other electric vehicle component manufacturers. Through this project, they parties developed an electric bus which they tested out at UTM (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia) campus in Johor and we had also heard that the state government of Melaka was also interested in procuring the buses for use in and around Melaka city.
Of course, it is now August of 2018 and it looks like the recent elections have actually slowed down the plans to have electric buses running in and around Melaka. It usually happens when there is a change in the ruling political party. Anyway, the electric bus prototype you see in here is the bus in question. It is quite unique in some ways and also quirky in another. I shall explain.
Whilst this is not the first fully electric bus that is in operation today (the first being the Sunway BRT line with 15 buses begining 2016), it does show how electric buses will evolve in terms of how it will be used in the future. It is still for short inner-city commutes but the charging time is now super short, by 2018 standards of course.
The Go Auto-Higer bus can be rapid charged in 20 minutes with a special double plug set up. Usually we have a single point cable running from the vehicle to the charging point but here, the Higer designed bus uses a double point to zap the bus with double the charge. It is this dual charging setup that makes things fast and it is also flexible as in areas where there is no such charging facility, the usual one plug socket can be used, albeit slower charging times.
The quirk I have to mentioned about this electric bus is the placement of the batteries. It would seem that the individual batteries are placed at the rear of the bus and high up. This is quite a strange placement for batteries. Usually we see battery placement to be at the floor of vehicles but this isn't the case from the looks of the photo above. I suppose weight distribution would be quite bad if everything is at the rear. I also assume that the motors would be at the rear powering the rear wheels. This would mean that there should be a rearward bias for the chassis and the centre of gravity for the chassis is also quite high up (considering the placement of the batteries).
Safety would be an issue if the bus were rear ended by a truck or another bus in an accident (a car would hit a lower point and not hit the batteries), but that being said, the bus is for inner-city commuting so speeds should be reasonably low unlike the highways. Of course, the rearward bias would make handling a chore, but I also heard that a lot of the other equipment are mounted up front to balance off the weight a little. Those that have driven it say that it handles like any other bus.
I would actually need to try out this bus before I can make any conclusions about it. But one thing I can say now is that you can tell this is a commercial vehicle as the fit and finish is a tad bit rough. Check out the plastic mould casting for the front emblem. It could be made better.
Electric buses are the future of inner-city bus routes. This bus is a good example of what can be done with electric power. A twenty minute charge time is quite good and I believe the bus has a 50km range so it would be able to operate in a 10km circuit for at least 4 times before requiring a charge. Note that the Sunway BRT line is only 5.4km in total, so an electric bus actually has potential if it were used for inner-city routes. This would also help clean up the environment as pollution is not at the vehicle but only at some power plant far away from the congested city centre. It makes sense.
Facing front....
Facing the rear...
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