![]() ![]() ![]() To start with, that might include satellite-based tracking to keep the Superbus on course, sensors to scan the road for obstacles up to 300 metres ahead and a smart suspension system that remembers the rough spots in the road. This kind of flexibility is a central tenet of the project the estimated three-year lifespan of a Superbus (as opposed to thirteen years for a standard European bus) will also allow the latest technologies to be phased in quickly as they become available. ![]() The individual doors also allow for rapid loading and unloading of passengers, which will need to be fast if the Superbus is to live up to its promised door-to-door mission: instead of making predetermined stops, the vehicle will pick up and drop off passengers based on their text-messaged requests. The low ceiling and the use of lightweight materials make for a far more streamlined vehicle, which in turn requires only a modest electric motor: though engineers have not yet decided whether the Superbus will be powered by fuel cells or batteries, they estimate that it will be able to accelerate from rest to 100kph in a leisurely 36 seconds. The low-riding Superbus, in contrast, has a separate door for each of its 30-odd seats. Joris Melkert, the project's manager, explains that the designers managed to keep the Superbus this small by doing away with the central aisle usually found in today's buses, a vestigial design feature that allows passengers to stand upright, but also gives conventional buses the aerodynamic profile of a brick. Though it is as wide and long as a standard city bus, the Superbus is only 1.7 metres high, or roughly the same height as a sports-utility vehicle. ![]() The Superbus would be driven in the usual way on roads and an autopilot would be engaged when it reached a supertrack. It could thus present an alternative to much more expensive magnetic-levitation trains. It is an electric bus designed to be able to switch seamlessly between ordinary roads and dedicated “supertracks”, on which it can reach speeds of 250kph (155mph). IT LOOKS rather like a futuristic stretch limousine, but its actual function is rather more populist: the Superbus is a novel public-transport system being developed in the Netherlands by the Delft University of Technology. ![]()
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