Queensland Thermo King has been waiting for nearly three years to receive its latest electric bus air conditioning unit from Thermo King Global.
In 2019, Thermo King’s global body started a rather ambitious project. Seeing the wave of electric buses coming onto the market, the company has been striving to design air conditioning models that are lighter and more efficient to suit these battery electric buses. While Australian arm Queensland Thermo King continues to supply its current products to OEMs around Australia, the global Thermo King group has had a side project finalising its groundbreaking new electric bus air conditioning system platform.
These efforts have finally paid off, and are ready for the world to see. Queensland Thermo King product development manager Allan Lowes says its latest electric bus units will be released to the local market in late 2022.
“We’ve got a new electric bus E1200 LW model coming out from Thermo King Global that we showcased at the Expo,” Lowes told ABC.
“It started being designed in 2019 and was then made available for some research and development in early 2020.
“We’ve then seen it be rolled out to our factory, where it will now become available to the market from 2022 onwards.”
Lowes says the new E1200 LW bus AC unit is the latest lightweight development that builds upon Queensland Thermo King’s previous E1200 electric model. The E1200 LW is suited for electric buses, with the company having gone through a stringent process of reducing the unit’s weight as much as possible so it can fit the efficiency agenda of new battery electric bus and coach models.
Thermo King Global used a wide array of techniques to make the E1200 LW unit more compact and lighter than previous models. The overall size of the unit is now smaller, with a new lightweight aluminium frame being incorporated to replace the previous FRP frame. The team stripped the older systems’ componentry to ensure multiple weight reductions, with an impressive result.
Lowes says these changes have caused a 24 per cent weight loss between the E1200 LW and Queensland Thermo King’s previous models.
“All of these weight changes add up,” Lowes says.
“Based on feedback about where the electric bus market is heading, we thought making this model as light as possible would help the industry.
“The E1200 LW model is beneficial for the bus market as it allows electric batteries to work for longer so the bus can cover more distance.”
Also included in the latest unit is new inverter technology that allows the air conditioning model to be configurable to both high voltage DC and AC chassis inputs. Lowes says Thermo King also upgraded the control sequence, transitioning over to a smarter iCAN controller system.
These changes mean the E1200 LW unit integrates well with all chassis to allow for efficient power management. Lowes says the model’s CAN network allows for good two-way communication throughout the bus’s network, while a new energy efficient heat pump has also made the entire system more efficient.
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“The most efficient way of running an air conditioner onboard an electric bus is through the energy efficient heat pump,” Lowes says.
“It also has optional PTC heating for ambience when the weather hits below -10 degrees Celsius – not that it does much in Australia.
“It may not be super useful in Australian climates, but it’s handy around the world. It also increases our cooling capacity by 10 per cent from our previous models and has auxiliary battery cooling that is integrated in with the chassis.”
These efficiency updates all came about through feedback from Queensland Thermo King to its parent company. Lowes says the E1200 LW unit will help Queensland Thermo King continue moving into the zero-emissions market, which will in turn benefit Thermo King’s global reach.
After a few years spent developing and waiting, Lowes says the team at Queensland Thermo King couldn’t wait to release the new E1200 LW air conditioning model ahead of the Expo.
Despite waiting patiently for the release, Lowes says the timing is now perfect for the company to showcase its most efficient unit yet.
“It’s definitely amazing timing,” Lowes says.
“In a perfect world we get to release the model earlier, but the COVID-19 pandemic inhibited the roll-out in Australia.
“It’s still good timing the way it has worked out, as we’ve now got a lot of interest in it from people who are keen to see the lightweight design following the Expo.”
There may be many minute design changes that have helped the E1200 LW unit become an even sleeker and more efficient air conditioning unit for electric buses. But when stepping back and admiring the completed product, Lowes says Queensland Thermo King can clearly see the improvements made on previous models.
“I definitely think it’s an enhancement on our product range,” Lowes says.
“We’re so excited about the unit’s capability and can’t wait to see what the industry thinks when we roll it out to the market.”