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Any capacitor large enough to run the bus, would presently be many times the size of the actual bus, thus the capacitors would need to be in a string of trailers behind the bus to power it and leave room for the passengers. If such a capacitor-powered bus was ever designed, then consider how damaging the energy stored in the capacitor/s, if a sudden short circuit developed - it would demolish several city blocks in the resultant explosion. By comparison, energy stored in chemical form is far safer, small volume for large energy storage, easy to control.

The Tindo bus is the stuff of car-free, green, geeky dreams: It epitomizes efficient urban transportation and energy use, and to top it all off, it’s free. Our friends at EcoGeek first tipped up off to the story.

Hasselt City Council's principal aim in introducing free public transport was to promote the new bus system to such a degree that it would catch on and become the natural option for getting around.

oyota's heavy duty division, Hino, is testing a new kind of plug-in hybrd...one without a plug. The batteries on the hybrid assist and even sometimes take over for the diesel engine. But the energy in the batteries doesn't come from a plug, it comes from a wireless charging system built into the road.

Research over approximately two years showed that the parallel hybrid buses required “7 to 11 stops per kilometer to deliver their maximum benefit.”

True or false: taking the commuter train across Boston results in lower greenhouse gas emissions than travelling the same distance in a jumbo jet. Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is false. A new study compares the "full life-cycle" emissions generated by 11 different modes of transportation in the US. Unlike previous studies on transport emissions, Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath of the University of California, Berkeley, looked beyond what is emitted by different types of car, train, bus or plane while their engines are running and includes emissions from building and maintaining the vehicles and their infrastructure, as well as generating the fuel to run them.

For years, I was a public transit aficionado, constantly trumpeting the benefits of buses. I have to admit, though, that it didn’t take me long to swear off buses (and their rising costs to ride) forever, in favor of a totally free bicycle that could spirit me off to anywhere–back alleys and unique routes included.

Designer Chiyu Chen has conceived of an ingenious transit system that encourages the use of sustainable transportation by crediting people for renting and riding bicycles. His Hybrid2 system consists of a fleet of rentable bicycles that are capable of generating and storing kinetic energy, which is then used to power the city’s hybrid electric buses. Simply rent a bike, charge it up with kinetic energy from pedal power, and then return it to a kiosk - the station feeds energy into the city’s smart grid, and you receive a credit towards your next bus pass!