Tata Motors Starbus Fuel Cell Bus Takes to Streets in India

Tata Motors has developed a 30-seat hydrogen fuel cell bus for the street of India. The bus has roof-mounted hydrogen cylinders, 114 hp fuel cells and lithium ion batteries for energy storage.

According to Tata Motors (the 4th largest bus manufacturer in the world), the advantages of this FC bus include:

• Gasoline engines in conventional buses are less than 20% efficient in converting
• chemical energy to power whereas Starbus Fuel Cell offers 40-60% efficiency, i.e. 3 times more
• Starbus Fuel Cell ensures 50% reduction in fuel consumption
• A dependable, mobile and flexible system
• Domestically produced fuel – no dependency on foreign policies
• Fast refuelling ensures reduced downtime

Besides this ZEV Starbus being zero pollution it is also zero noise as well. This improves the drive experience for both drivers and passengers.

This does beg the question though, since Tata Motors already manufactures CNG school buses, where are the fuel cell school buses? One would think that drivers and students would benefit from a zero noise buses and this would be a good educational tool as well.

Hat Tip

I’d like to give a hat tip to Kerry-Ann Adamson (@KerryAnnEnergy) who posted a link to this company on Twitter.

References

http://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/index.php/hydrogen-buses/

http://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/index.php/category/hydrogenbuses/

http://www.buses.tatamotors.com/service/service.aspx

http://www.buses.tatamotors.com/products/starbus-fuel-cell.aspx

http://www.buses.tatamotors.com/products/pdf/starbus-fuel-cell-leaflet—23.pdf

http://www.fuelcelltoday.com/news-archive/2013/july/tata-motors-and-isro-develop-first-indian-fuel-cell-bus

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Isro-Tata-Motors-develop-Indias-first-fuel-cell-bus/articleshow/21430268.cms