Overview
The use of electromobility on urban bus routes offers great potential for reducing noise and emissions but also places special demands on operational planning and infrastructure. In order to gain practical experience in this area, in the HyLine-S project, a Stuttgart bus route will be converted to operating mostly with plug-in diesel hybrid buses. In addition to testing the drive technology under everyday conditions, the project will focus on the special requirements for hybrid buses with respect to scheduling and depot design. Furthermore, the ecological and economic impacts of using diesel-hybrid bus technology, as compared to conventional diesel buses, will be analysed and evaluated. The results should not only pinpoint optimisation potentials for operating the buses, they should generate new impulses for the training and qualification of drivers and workshop personnel.
In this project, five hybrid buses will be purchased which, through use of a plug-in function, can also be charged via an electrical outlet. The everyday use of the buses on a bus route will make it possible to test the practical suitability of the technology, to identify areas for improvement and to examine operational planning and maintenance requirements. Using a life cycle analysis, an integrated ecological and economic evaluation of the hybrid buses in comparison to conventional diesel vehicles will be made. By taking into account all the life cycle phases, from the manufacture, fuel supply, operation and maintenance to recycling, the findings will enable an assessment of the trial bus route and also an assessment of the fleet-wide use of the new drive technology within the Stuttgart metropolitan area.