973
Someone has to keep this operation grounded in reality (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/lotrmemes@midwest.social
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[–] 8 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Ah, yes the industry veterans. They had none. Most of the staff were recent university graduates. Those who weren't included a former minister, an engineer who designed various industrial buildings, like crude oil storage tanks, and electricity engineer.

Together, they designed and built a pantograph mostly by themselves, a high power charging system that worked through the roof that charged a 50 kW battery in 6 minutes.

The rest of the specialists were mostly obscure scientists, analysts, accountants and PR people.

Since I have already leaked myself, here is a picture of the "amazing superbus" prototype: link

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    The high-capacity pantograph charger/gantry is inspired. Since it's so far overhead it would appear to have some durability and safety advantages. I'm guessing that 6 minutes for 50kW is enough for charging in the field at the start/end of a route. Heck, now I'm wondering if you could get a substantial charge in the time it takes to onboard passengers at a stop.

    Edit: exercising my position as an armchair engineer, this idea could still work but I think a business focus as making kits for adapting existing EVs to the gantry system, along with manufacturing the gantries themselves, would be way more viable than building entire busses from scratch.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The moving parts of the machine that come down to charge the bus were made by some Italian company, I think. And some of the electric parts that raise the power to the right amount were built by a Romanian company.

    We did have capacitors arc and blow up once. Also, the charger itself arced and burned a hole in the metal where the bus parts and pantograph parts made the #-shaped contact.

    Before designing electronics, the electrician in charge of the project tried to get a readymade system from ABB. They called him 9 months later to talk about it and he replied "Don't need it anymore. We built our own." And they were like "What do you mean, you built your own?!" 😄

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