Bus Hybridization Effects in the Urban Area of Rome

Over the last decades, a tremendous effort has been made by the European Commission to control the amount of pollution in urban areas by means of EC directives to limit emissions. Today one of the main problems in urban areas is the particulate matter, predominantly emitted by diesel engines. In this scenario, the research group of the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” has undertaken a research project with the aim of identifying the benefits of new drive system technologies for urban buses.

In this work, the potential benefits of replacing Diesel engines with two different hybrid powertrains are shown. To obtain a projection of the beneficial effects of the hybridization on the urban area of Rome, numerical simulations have been carried out on some “real” driving cycles corresponding to real bus routes. To this mean experimental results and assumptions (as traffic characteristics and bus stop frequency) have been taken into account