In Beijing, MGL makes 50 buses run in 100% electrical way. Discover this innovation allowing  each bus to cover a distance of  100 kms at a maximal speed of 80 km/h.

Electric bus of the Olympic village
Beijing
30 people
September 2nd, 2008 

Arrival a few days after the Olympic Games, The Paralympic games will soon take place in Beijing. To limit the pollution, the factoris of the neighborood are stopped and the cars having an odd number plate only run the odd-numbered days ; same thing for the cars having an even number plate !

That is why we discover another Beijing,where there are no hold-ups in the traffic, the infrastructures are new and the walls are full of athlets  in action !

Impossible to come her without finding a project in relation with this major event for China. We heard about these  100% électrical buses running in the Olympic village…

We meet 2 young women of  MGL early this morning. Feng is the engineer in charge of the project, Marina,  who speaks a perfect French, is the scretary of the CEO. It is MGL which conceived the batteries for these buses which are an orinary look. It is a state-owned company like most of the Chinese companies.

50 buses on the whole, first tested on traditional lines, run in an 100% electrical way .

It is of course impossible to bring the buses to a standstill during the 4 hours of the batteries reloading. These large 240 kg blocks are thus reloaded in the huge batteries exchange station we are visiting and replace those of a bus having empty batteries « Time of the operation below 14 minutes »  Feng says !

300 batteries are put on huge shelves and big automated machines remove the empty batteries to put some new ones in it.This intense activity is impressive !

 4 years were necessary to finalize this technology allowing each bus to cover a distance of 100 kms at 80 km/h of maximal speed.

The project has been entirely financed by the city of  Tokyo and it is of course a demonstration project : the costs and the logistics are important. Impossible to have some figures because 14 companies worked together during 4 years and there was no limit on the budget…

These buses will continue to cross the streets of the capital after the Olympic Games on traditional lines. In fact,  the programme perfectly worked up to now…

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