Design & development of electric & hybrid buses
VDL Groep is an international industrial enterprise that focuses on subcontracting, the development, production and sale of buses and coaches and finished products, and the assembly of passenger cars. Our on-site Verhaert Consulting employee Dries De Ruyck helps developing electric and hybrid buses. As a proud Masters in Innovation member, he integrated as many innovative ideas and work methods as possible.
Role of the Verhaert Consulting consultant
On daily basis, Dries’ work consists of making production drawings of all kinds of items to be placed in and on the bus. He is part of an electromechanical team which is responsible for dashboards, antennas, exterior cladding, special units placed in the vehicle, camera’s and cabling.
Thanks to the cooperation between Verhaert Consulting and VDL, he has the opportunity to expand his experience and develop himself in an interesting branch of the industry. In his opinion, electrical vehicles are the way to achieve a green planet. At this moment, VDL is one of the leading companies in producing electrical buses in Europe.
Citea bus model
Time does not stand still and that is why innovation in combination with optimization of existing buses, is very important. Dries got the opportunity to help develop a new bus for the remaining year. The project is named NCC, which means New Concept Citea; Citea is the model which VDL delivers to its customers.
There are different types of Citea’s driving in Europe: first of all there is the standard bus as everybody knows it. On top of that we deliver also articulated buses, which exists of two ‘vehicle units’, connected with an accordion. The standard bus has a length of 12 meter, whereas the articulated buses are 18 meters. Imagine driving that in traffic! 🙂
Well, these buses are powered by electrical energy, but what about the storage of this energy? And how does the recharging system work? The standard and articulated buses have respectively 350 and 522 kW of electrical energy stored in batteries, located at the roof of the bus. Roughly calculated, one kilowatt equals one kilometer driven by the bus.
The recharging happens with a pantograph. This is a moveable busbar, located at the roof which can be lifted into a charging station. Once connected, a current of 800 amperes charges the batteries. Because of this method and the high current, a charging time of 10 minutes is sufficient to completely recharge the batteries for usage in public transport.
To conclude
Dries says he’s glad to be a consultant for a major client like VDL and that he’s given the confidence to help with develop a new bus model. It allows him to cultivate healthy ambition and curiosity for future projects for both VDL and Verhaert Consulting.