- Posted on Thursday, April 27th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Has Your City Gone Hybrid?
A GM Hybrid Bus during Super Bowl XL
The next time you get on a city bus, you may be riding on a GM diesel electric hybrid system. Many U.S. cities now use GM hybrid-powered buses, including Seattle, Philadelphia, Houston, Minneapolis, Portland, Honolulu, Aspen, Springfield, Charlotte, Albuquerque, Louisville, Detroit and Yosemite National Park.
GM hybrid buses produce much lower hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions than conventional diesel-powered buses. In addition, they are much more fuel-efficient than traditional buses. In fact, if America’s nine largest cities replaced their transit fleets — totaling 13,000 buses — with GM’s hybrid buses, the cities would save 40 million gallons of fuel each year — a greater savings than 500,000 small hybrid vehicles would produce. The GM hybrid buses are quieter and more efficient — and even accelerate 50% more quickly — than regular buses. Clearly a winning combination.
20 Comments
Patrick
Why don’t you make a TV ad to let the world know that GM hybrids do more good than Toyota’s 13,000 buses save more gas than 500.000 Toyota Hybrids.
tim s
I think we really need to get this acheivement out to the public!! I havent seen or heard of this except on gm only websites
Buick Diesel
I second the above comments! Toyota is not the hybrid king after all.
Edward Hayes
I third the motion.
Okay, motion passes.
We are all in agreement, GM needs to advertise the benefits of these buses. Once city planners know the fuel savings, air quality improvements, comfort and noise reducing qualities of these buses over conventional buses there is not going to be a city in the nation that is not going to want one. Can GM and its suppliers handle the extra business?
234 - Number of ethanol factories now under construction.
Stan
I Fourth the Motion!!
Let people know across the country from California to Iowa to Maine.Those are some IMPRESSIVE NUMBERS!I hope every Federal,State,City official knows about these buses if not SPREAD THE WORD!!!
Robert Wilson
I agree this is great news. People don’t quite follow GM’s strategy of introducing hybrids on the big gas users - busses and full size trucks where you get much more bang for your buck than on already economy size cars.
GM should also (although much more is being done with the Live Green Go Yellow) let people know just how many Flex Fuel vehicles the company has put into the market over the last 10 years. I’ll bet there are quite a few families who drive suburbans that don’t realize there vehicle will also run on Ethanol.
On a side note, I accompanied my colleague to take delivery of his 2007 Suburban on Tuesday this week. I think this is the most outstanding vehicle I’ve ever been in. The fit and finish is extremely impressive. We went to lunch and promptly filled it up with Ethanol. Outstanding.
Ram K
My family rode GM’s Hybrid bus at the Detroit Science Center as part of Earth Day activities.
We loved riding this bus - smooth ride, no black exhaust smoke, etc. The others riding with us also loved the ride and made similar comments.
GM should do more to present the value and positive impact of its hybrid technology to the american people.
getalifeagain
I don’t understand why this is the first I heard of this. If any foreign company did this, they would splatter it all over the airwaves! (And everyone would be in awe).
Edwin
How about has your school district gone hybrid?
At $3.00 per gallon, school districts would save all kinds of money.
Gil
Will you *please* advertise when this bus will be at events?? I’ll bet people would pay a _fee_ to say they’ve ridden on a hybrid bus.
Better yet, you could post a calendar of upcoming appearances on one of these web sites. But, cross-post, please, because now you have so many web-based voices out there. It’s getting hard to find the *one* place for information.
楠楠
nice looking…but i dont think theres much hope that we can take this in Beijing.
Gil
getalife, unfortunately, the media has been blasted with these stories. I have two thoughts. 1) Since it’s coming from GM, the media is dismissing this for some odd reason. 2) all the automotive media seems to originate from Detroit, and they’re just tired of hearing the constant din from the PR machine.
I suggest another advertising campaign like Live Green Go Yellow. Get something new and innovative on the airwaves, and _pay_ for the advertising so you don’t have to deal with as many gatekeepers.
Paul
So you’d be happy if everyone stopped buying cars and started riding the bus?
CaptainDan
Gil,
Very few of the automotive media originate in Detroit. The vast majority originate from the Los Angeles area (a very foreign car receptive area), and some from New York City (where the vast majority of people don’t even HAVE cars). The only major automotive media that I know of from Detroit (actually Ann Arbor) is Car and Driver.
Gil
Paul: To whom is your comment directed? I don’t think anyone is asking all of society to give up personal transportation and ride the bus.
The fact is that there are *tons* of buses out there (GM, help me out here with some numbers!), and replacing them with this type of a hybrid would have a much greater impact on reducing all those emissions than if everyone picked up a hybrid car. Which, by the way, we know will not happen for all kinds of reasons.
So, like Edwin said, get the school districts involved, too. Create economic benefits (bonus funding??) for the schools to slowly replace their buses with this type. Get systems like SMART in Detroit to use them. They’ve already proven their usefulness in Seattle… time for everyone else to take note!
Gil
Cap’nDan: That’s cool. I stand corrected. (Maybe I’m just thinking of all the bit players in Detroit…) Either way, you helped support my position that the media just doesn’t want to hear it from GM or Ford. What’s GM to do?
Advertise!
Gil
Argh! Why is GM still getting beaten to the punch? On the home page of CNN is this video of *** Ford’s *** fuel cell vehicle: http://www.cnn.com/video/partners/clickability/index.html?url=/video/tech/2006/05/03/candiotti.hydrogen.fuel.cars.cnn
This thing only goes 200 miles on a hydrogen fill-up, and the Sequel (according to the onlygm.com web site) goes 300. What happened to all those FedEx hydrogen vehicles? What about the ones in D.C.?
Why won’t CNN do a story on those?? (Cross-posting *somewhere on cnn.com!)
JW
How about a Tahoe Hybrid, with Active Fuel Management (DOD), AND THE NEW 6-speed AUTOMATIC, AND DIESEL? Could this thing get 30mpg on the highway OR more than 20 City? Either one?!?!?!
I’d love to see the ad on TV showing the Honda Accord: “Stop buying those small Japanese gas-guzzlers. Get a Fullsize, capable SUV from Chevrolet, with a V-8 engine, that get better gas mileage than a Honda Accord with a V-6.”
Just checked and the Accord with a V-6 only gets 29/20. GM needs a big marketing and/or technology coup!
Marc
This is great news. I wonder about the up front cost of the buses. My guess is that like most hybrids it is more expensive than a conventional version of itself.
GM and the Federal Government should would togetherr to provide incentives for big cities and school districts to purchase these vehicles.
xyb
Yeah, costs… maybe the Education web site could have a worksheet that steps through all these MPG calculations to show the real cost of operating a hybrid bus versus a diesel bus. I wonder if the maintenance is less or more.
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