With the industry still waiting to see a prototype of the announced, upcoming Starcraft-Hino Type C conventional, developments out of Tokyo this week sheds some light on the potential of alternative fuels for school buses.
Since it made the Hino announcement last November, Starcraft has been tight-lipped about the direction it might eventually pursue when it comes to alt fuels, saying only that the first Type C would be a straight diesel utilizing SCR technology to meet EPA emissions requirement. Up until now, IC Bus and Thomas Built Buses have produced the only school buses operating on hybrid drivetrains for the large bus market. But that could change sometime after the completion of the new Starcraft-Hino project.
Toyota Motor Corporation and Hino Motors are partnering with Showa Shell Sekiyu, otherwise known as the Shell Oil Group, to pilot a new kind of diesel-electric hybrid transit bus fueled by a mixture of Fischer-Tropsch diesel (FTD) No. 1 and biodiesel No. 2. Fischer Tropsch itself is an ultra-low sulfur mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen into liquid hydrocarbons that typically originates from coal, natural gas or biomass, the latter two being the preferred sources for vehicle consumption.
The trial is set to begin this month and will run through the end of this year on an existing Tokyo transit route, and it’s obviously expensive as the project is subsidized by the Japanese government. One aim is to verify that the FTD-biodiesel mixture can be used at extended intervals without modifying fuel hoses, fuel injectors and the like.
Could it eventually become the latest route to realizing a reduced dependence on foreign oil and a cleaner environment? Such technologies, once proven and perfected, have a market but obviously need to meet the requirements of supply and demand before they could ever become truly affordable for fleet operators, especially those at cash-strapped school districts.
That’s been one hurdle IC and Thomas still have to clear with their respective hybrids. Market saturation will come, and so will affordable alt fuel solutions.
