The Swiss company Furrer+Frey and Germany's Schunk have developed an overhead fast charging system which is similar in design to the overhead brushes you might find in electric streetcar applications. Combined with Altair-nano lithium batteries, the batteries can be kept topped up at the end of the bus route for 5 or 6 minutes at a time. This allows the bus to run all day long off of grid electricity. Which could of course be emissions free and peak oil defying wind power.
So sorry doomers, looks like the logistics infrastructure and the mass transit infrastructure isn't collapsing any time soon. Even if significant numbers have to take the bus in the interrim if we get a hard decline (unlikely) we will still be able to get our cheap plastic trinkets from wal-mart and be able to get there by bus.
Company spokesman Opbrid CEO Roger Bedell:
"It can be installed easily in any location, since it is unobtrusive and swings away from the road when not in use. Unlike building a tram or trolleybus system, the Bůsbaar can be installed in days at a tiny fraction of the cost.
With this system, it is possible to change most of the urban bus systems in the world from petroleum to electricity simply by changing diesel buses to fast charged hybrids and installing these charging stations. We can do this now."
Anyone else notice that? It can be installed in days.
Just let that sink in for a moment and then consider exactly how few of these we'd need to install under hard-crash conditions compared to how many charging points we need to keep all electric cars running.
Dieoff? Hit the snooze button.
The full story is here:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/10/prweb4603564.htm
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