Popular_Science_Australia_November_2016

80 POPULAR SCIENCE

Then

Retro Invasion

CONSIDER THE THANKLESS

task of the mid-20th-century

town planner. You must,

especially in Europe, design

your city such that hundreds

of thousands of people can

move around it every day, but of

course there is no money to do

this. Budgets

are tight. Fancy

overhead

electric wires

down every street for the trams?

Maybe in Western Europe...

wait, this was a problem in

Switzerland? And the Swiss came

up with an insane solution?

Indeed, while the rest of

Europe was going up in flames,

during the 1940s the Swiss

somehow had enough time and

money to develop the Gyrobus.

Unlike a typical electric tram,

the Gyrobus could not depend

on a network of overhead

electric wires. And since this

was the 1940s, the concept

of lithium-ion batteries or

hydrogen fuel cells or even LPG

was beyond the wildest dreams

of science fiction authors.

Come Back DJ

So Swiss technology group

Oerlikon decided to store energy

in a flywheel instead. Basically,

at certain points on the bus

route, the bus would raise three

booms to contact a charging

pole. Electricity from the pole

would power an AC induction

motor which in turn would spin

up the flywheel to incredible

speeds, thus storing energy.

When it pulled away from the

charger, electrical systems in the

Gyrobus would switch the AC

motor to operate as a generator,

bleeding off momentum from

the f lywheel to create an electric

current. This current ran the

engine and brakes.

For bus-work it was... okay.

The Gyrobus could trundle

along at 50km/h for six

kilometres or so before the

flywheel needed another spin.

On flat routes, this was fine. On

by

ANTHONY

FORDHAM

Who wouldn’t want to commute while sitting on

a two-tonne disc spinning at 900km/h?

The

Gyrobus