Belarusian manufacturer Belkommunmash (BKM Holding) introduces supercapacitor fleet for trial later this year
Belkommunmash (BKM Holding) drew attention with a display of its first right-hand drive E-bus, due for deployment in Nottingham for trials later this year.
The vehicle is a conversion of the E321, configured for the UK market. Chief advantage is its 90,000 charge cycles, says Chief Design Engineer of BKM Holding and head of the Nottingham trials project Sergey Chistov. The vehicle can operate up to 300km per day and has a battery lifetime exceeding 10 years, says BKM.
Chinese-made supercapacitor charging technology permits charging in between five and eight minutes. Nottingham City Council has previously announced plans for charging points throughout the city.
Mr Chistov says operating vehicles on such a basis is not without challenges. “If you plan to operate 200 buses with 20 megawatts of electricity through the night, it can be quite challenging for so much energy in one point,” he explains.
The company says it is ironing out any issues in October for the November trial, and will introduce a charging station in the same location used by BYD’s electric park-and-ride fleet.
Electric range is up to 30km between charges, according to BKM. Vehicle weight fully loaded at 18 tonnes reduces that to 20km, though Mr Chistov assures that such a weight would be impossible to achieve under normal operating conditions. Nominal voltage is 600v, with a nominal current of 450 amps that can rise to 500. DC charging is used.
BKM will seek local partners for construction.
The firm designs the body, power, and integration of the electric system and relies on co-operation for other components such as motors, familiar among which is the ZF AB130.
“Every single city has its own situation and its own requirements,” says Mr Chistov. “We analyse power, infrastructure, routes and gradients. Only after that do we choose the battery and the motor. We manufacture what we can sell – we don’t just sell what we can manufacture.”
