The Proterra EcoRide BE35 is a (nominal length) fast-charge battery electric bus that seats 38 (including the driver) with a total passenger capacity of 60 in its composite low floor body. Foothill Transit was the first transit agency to operate the buses in revenue service, starting in September 2010. It is the first or larger, heavy-duty all-electric bus ever to complete federally required durability, reliability and safety testing at the Bus Research and Testing Center in Altoona, Pennsylvania. The 12yr/ STURAA test was completed on March 5, 2012.
The BE35's electric traction motor draws from lithium-titanate batteries supplied by Altairnano that can be recharged in 5–10 minutes while stopped at a bus stop via overhead terminals connected to a charging station, without driver involvement. The quick charging during a brief layover typically enables a further of operation.
History
CEO Dale Hill and VP Phil Sweesy of Mobile Energy Solutions, LLC (MES) in Golden, Colorado had previously designed, engineered, and manufactured the 36 CNG-fueled TransTeq EcoMark I hybrid buses for the 16th Street Mall in Denver, Colorado. In 2006, MES announced it was designing a battery-electric bus codenamed "Origin One", recharged by onboard hydrogen fuel cells; the company announced it had already won a contract for two buses from the Greater New Haven Transit District, the transit agency serving New Haven, Connecticut. This was followed by a 2007 contract for two more fuel cell buses for Burbank, California; by this time the key characteristics were announced: a composite body provided by Martin Marietta, lithium-titanate batteries, and plug-in charging in addition to onboard charging through the use of a range-extending auxiliary power unit (APU) consisting of two 16 kW fuel cells from Hydrogenics.
Developmental funding was provided by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), who had awarded a grant under the National Fuel Cell Bus Program to a team led by the Center for Transportation and the Environment (CTE); CTE had selected MES to develop the prototype bus. MES was also a partner in the FTA's Electric Drive Strategic Plan program. MES acquired an old school bus to serve as a mobile development laboratory (MDL) for drivetrain development, including the battery, traction motor, and control system. The MDL was damaged after one battery cell leaked electrolyte, short-circuited, and caught on fire, leading MES to redesign its battery management system and add a protective enclosure for the battery modules in the finished prototype.
MES changed its name to Proterra in June 2008 and exhibited a prototype of the HFC35 transit bus that October at the American Public Transit Association Expo in San Diego. As shown with the fuel cell APU, Proterra claimed the HFC35 had a range of before needing to be refueled or recharged. Alternatively, the HFC35 could be optioned with diesel, gasoline, or natural gas APUs.
In 2009, Proterra demonstrated a variant of the HFC35 that omitted the APU altogether, which Proterra named the EcoRide BE35. The BE35 stopped in four California cities during its weeklong tour: San Jose, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Francisco.
Deployment
The HFC35 prototype exhibited at APTA '08 in San Diego was later demonstrated in Washington, D.C. (Nov 2008) and a nationwide tour in regular service was scheduled for 2009, starting in Columbia, South Carolina as a football stadium shuttle for the University of South Carolina (with maintenance, refueling, and charging at Central Midlands Regional Transit Authority), with Capital Metro in Austin, Texas, and at the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver, British Columbia. A second HFC35 was ordered by the City of Burbank, and a third was ordered by the United States Department of Defense (DoD) for use in Washington state. Burbank's HFC35 entered service in May 2010. The DoD HFC35 was delivered to Joint Base Lewis–McChord in Tacoma, Washington, where it was powered by hydrogen reformed from mewthane produced during wastewater treatment.