Aluminum-Intensive Buses May Debut at Olympics

Zhengzhou Yutong Bus Company, Ltd. and Alcoa have formed a partnership to apply world-class structural design, materials, and manufacturing technologies to develop energy-efficient, environmentally friendly buses for China’s growing commuting public.

The first element of the partnership will be the development of a new, environmentally friendly bus designed to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve fuel economy. It is anticipated that the prototypes will be ready in time for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.

“The partnership between Yutong Bus and Alcoa on the new sustainable bus demonstrates long-term commitment to the support of our government’s policy to build mass transportation vehicles in harmony with society, people, and the environment,” said Tang Yuxiang, chairman and chief executive of Zhengzhou Yutong, China’s largest bus manufacturer and the number two producer in the world.

“We realize that reducing the weight of tomorrow’s short- and long-range buses will be essential for improving their sustainability—and that the intelligent application of aluminum is one of best methods possible to achieve such mass reduction,” he added.

A recent study by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Heidelberg, Germany, which was presented at the 2007 China Aluminum and Transportation Conference in Dalian in August, revealed that a weight reduction of 220 lbs. in a diesel-powered city bus making several stops will save 674 gallons of fuel and significantly reduce carbon-dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions over its lifetime.

“Our goal, of course, is to work with Yutong to achieve significantly more than [220 lbs.] weight reduction per vehicle,” said Jinya Chen, Alcoa’s president for the Asia-Pacific region.

Chen added that through the combination of aluminum spaceframe design and advanced manufacturing technologies, the companies hope to achieve weight reductions on the order of 15 to 20 percent while maintaining the buses’ safety and enhancing their sustainability performance.

Clearing the Air
With less than a year to go until the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, Yutong Bus Company’s initiative takes on all the more symbolic significance. Air pollution in the city is a persistent problem, which Olympic chief Jacques Rogge has said could even lead to the postponement of some endurance sports, such as cycling.

Heavy industry and auto emissions are the major causes of Beijing’s smog problem. The Chinese government has already indicated that, in the weeks leading up to the Games, it will shut down much of the industry in the city and will limit the operations of others. Automobile use will also be restricted during the Games.

The Chinese government’s effort to mitigate pollution recalls that which was put in place during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Olympic organizers’ success in reducing smog during those Games is generally credited with propelling much of the effort to boost California’s air and auto-emissions standards in the years that followed.