A CENTURY OF HYBRID BUSES
Hybrid buses are almost a century old. The first ones were developed by the British vehicle manufacturer W.A. Stevens, who developed as W. A. Stevens Electrical Engineers a gasoline-electric vehicle in 1906.
In 1907 Stevens began an agreement with Hallford (J. & E. Hall of Dartford) to convert their gasoline trucks to gasoline electric. An important customer, bus operator Thomas Tilling, took over the Stevens company, ended the agreement with Hallford and renamed W.A. Stevens into Tilling Stevens Ltd and started using the petrol-electric driveline for buses.
The diesel-electric hybrid bus as we know it now was developed exactly 40 years ago, in 1969, by then Daimler-Benz. This first hybrid bus was designated the OE302, fitted with a 91 kWh accumulator and a 3.8 litre four-cylinder diesel engine delivering 65 HP.
