Bus Show
It had been four long years since the last major bus and coach expo was held in Australia, thanks to the scourge of the Pandemic. When they threw open the doors of the main exhibition building and the Dome at the Sydney Showgrounds, everyone probably realised that there would be some emphasis on electric buses but no one could have guessed just how extensive and widespread the embrace of zero emission buses would be. We take a look at the Australasian Bus and Coach Expo and came away impressed.
E
verywhere you looked at the 2022 Australasian Bus and Coach Expo there was a strong zero emission theme underlining the
global trend that was also so apparent earlier in September at the massive IAA Transportation Expo in Hannover. While
Sydney could never be compared with the size of the Hannover Expo, the sentiments were the same.
From the time you walked in the door and
saw the large Volvo stand with a battery electric bus dominating the stand and not an internal combustion engine bus to be seen. It wasn’t so much different at most of the manufacturer’s stands.
At Scania, not surprisingly, they had a bit
of a bet each way, informed by the reality that since most agree internal combustion will be around for some years to come, then we better make those fuel burning engines as clean and environmentally
014 www.truckandbus.net.au
friendly as possible. The other Swede brought new products and technology to the Bus Expo, and in fairness the headline act was in fact a
Scania Battery Electric bus chassis, sitting alongside two internal combustion engine machines, with a New Bus Generation K 320 C coach and K 320 C route bus.
One solution that Scania also showed on its stand was a clean biodiesel compatible 550kVa generator, capable of becoming a relatively clean way of remotely charging electric buses where there may not be electric infrastructure to charge them. Sure its not zero emission, but it is as
Scania says a way to the future by ensuring ways of emphasising its wide array of low emission applications. When hooked up with a Scania E-Machine, the biodiesel compatible genset provides the motive
power for the company’s trucks, buses and marine or industrial EV applications.
