GyroDrive - Flywheel Hybrid System for City Bus and Commercial Vehicle use

GyroDrive is a game changing hybrid concept for City bus and HGV applications. Despite significant pressure to reduce emissions and improve fuel consumption, the commercial uptake of hybrid buses has been low due the high system cost. Additionally, with a life of up to 20 years, there will be a significant number of diesel buses in service for the forseeable future. The GyrdoDrive consortium will build and prove a novel hybrid system, incorporating an electrically driven flywheel. The system will be less than half the weight of a current hybrid system, and will be small enough to retro fit to an existing bus with no loss of interior space. The system will be developed by Williams Hybrid Power, GKN, and GKN-Evo, with Go Ahead group performing a fleet trial on a number of different bus types to validate the system performance. The consortium expect fuel savings of up to 25%, and expect the system price in production to have a payback period of less than 5 years