Gooooooooal!

While Los Angeles Galaxy soccer star David Beckham has fallen out of favor with many fans after he temporarily left the team earlier this year to play for powerhouse AC Milan of the prestigious Italian League Serie A, we had to chuckle at a doctored photo we found on the Photoshop page at Worth1000.com.

Reads the creator's comments:

"After he didn´t score for the LA Galaxy, Beckham was fired but he got a new job as a school bus driver."

If you look closely at the patch on Beckham's right chest, it appears some lucky employee at Martinsville School District southeast of Indianapolis lent his body to one of the world's premier soccer players in the world. But I wonder what wife Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham would think about all of this.

Navistar Points to CARB Research to Back Up Claims Against SCR

Navistar, the parent company of IC Bus, has taken its fight against selective catalyst reduction and for advanced exhaust gas recirculation as the right choice for meeting upcoming EPA 2010 emissions requirements in lowering nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions at the tailpipe to no more than 0.2 grams. Currently, Navistar is suing the EPA in federal appeals court as it contends the feds by allowing SCR in its regulations will being increasing public health risks due to urea, the additive used in SCR to reduce NOx in the engine that has been used for the past two decades in Europe.

The aggressive marketing performed by Navistar this year has drawn criticism from many in automotive and fleet circles, such as Oliver Dixon's "Spiral of Dispair" article earlier this week on The World Trucks Blog at UK's www.roadtransport.com. But then, Navistar offered a rebuttal by claiming that a June letter penned by Bart Croes, chief of California Air Resources Board research, to the Health Effects Institute, a Boston nonprofit organization planning tests on 2010 engines, that said that the use of SCR represents a "large departure from conventional emission controls by introducing a liquid additive containing an organic form of nitrogen." According to MYETTNEWS.com, The letter goes on:

“Some toxic air contaminants that have been identified with SCR technology include hydrogen cyanide, cyanic acid, nitromethane, hydrazine, acrylonitrile, acrylamide, acetonitrile, and acetamide,” Croes wrote in his letter. “It is hoped that any exotic substances emitted from SCR technology will be at levels insignificant to exposure health effects.”

Although we are encouraged by findings to date, which suggest that the technology can deliver significant reductions of many species of toxicological relevance, this work has also documented the increase in some emissions such as some metals, nitrous oxide and nanoparticles.”

In the August issue of School Transportation News, contributor Bob Pudlewski writes that fleets must individually decide which technology best suits their needs, but either one has an increased price tag.

The debate rages on.

DIY: Build Your Own Plug-in Hybrid?

It might not give step-by-step instructions for retrofitting your school bus, but a new book purports to tell readers how they, too, can create their own plug-in hybrid electric vehicle like the like the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid or the 2010 Toyota Prius.

Perhaps those especially savvy readers can even hold onto the hope that they might eventually be eligible for the next round of federal grants for electric battery and hybrid drive train development. Well, OK, probably not, especially as GreenCarReports.com editor John Voelker gives it less than a stellar review of Build Your Own Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle.

First of all, the book says it can help owners of hybrid vehicles convert them to PHEVs. The author is Seth Leitman, who last year coauthored an updated version of the classic Build Your Own Electric Vehicle. Voelker writes that the book is:

"...comprehensive but slightly disappointing. In part, that's because book publishing takes way too much time. The field of PHEVs is evolving so fast that you can only find truly up-to-date information online.

In particular, the book's list of conversion kits, sources, and background is now several months old. That's a lifetime for a technology whose members exchange information and collaborate to solve technical problems in online forums (eaa-phev is just one of many)."

The commercially-available hybrid diesel school bus currently on the market are from IC Bus, and Thomas Built Buses. IC Bus has both an PHEV and HEV, while Thomas has the latter. If this book review doesn't detract you, and you're the competitive entrepreneurial type, the book can be found on Amazon or in bookstores like Barnes & Noble.

UPDATE: A previous post made it sound like Thomas Built Buses was the only manufacturer with a hybrid school bus available to the market. We didn't mention IC Bus and its own plug-in and regular hybrid-electric models, which has been available the longest, since 2006, and currently has about few hundred in service nationwide. We regret the oversight, a big one.

Thomas Built Buses Dealers Gets in on Tech Competition Craze

We saw this story on a recent in-house competition for heavy-duty truck technicians held at Empire Truck Sales in Slidell, La. In addition to Thomas buses, the Jackson, Miss.-based dealership also specializes in heavy-duty trucks by Freightliner, Western Star and Sterling, as well as American LaFrance emergency vehicle.

The event held on July 25 calls to mind NAPT's annual America's Best School Bus Inspector & School Bus Inspector Training & Skills Competition, this year scheduled for Sept. 22-25 in Greenville, S.C., at Michelin.

CTO Responsible for MaxxForce Leaving Navistar

Automotive World reported yesterday that Dr. Helmut Endres is no longer with Navistar International Truck & Engine. Endres came to Navistar in 2006 and became chief technical officer and vice president of Powertrain Engineering, helping to develop and to design the company's MaxxForce engine line. Considered one of the world's leading He is one of the world’s leading authorities on diesel engines with a disciplined approach to design, validation, cost controls and product quality.

The magazine reported that Endres e-mail inbox is automatically replying to incoming messages by saying that he left the company this month.

Prior to coming to Navistar, Helmut worked for Volkswagon in Germany for a decade, leading a global team of 2,000 engineers. Among his accomplishments are the development of the high-performance V-10 TDI diesel engine in VW’s Touareg SUV and Phaeton luxury sedan, and the introduction of turbo-charged, direct-injection gasoline engines with low-fuel consumption as well as high power and torque.

The 'New GM' Out of Bankruptcy, Still Committed to School Bus Market

As the industry has been closely watching the demise of GM, there seems to be some good news coming out of Detroit: the automaker is remaining dedicated to its small school bus business as it was emerging bankruptcy sooner than expected. A company spokesman recently told STN that the commitment to manufacturing chassis for the school bus market has not changed [Look for this article in the August STN issue].

Going forward, the big purchasers of GM cutaway chassis on the Chevy Express and GMC Savana platforms are Girardin Minibus and Trans-Tech. Thomas Built Buses also uses some GM. But in filing for bankruptcy, GM was separated from Opel, the German manufacturer responsible for much of GM's diesel expertise dating back to 1929. What could that mean for the diesel business?

Competition is stiff elsewhere, too. As GM's works hard to keep its head above water, the sharks are circling. That's not necessarily in the best interest of the taxpayers, which now effectively own GM, but it could be an impetus to truly a "New GM," as the company is now calling itself.

Speaking of competition, Collins Bus Corporation announced earlier this spring that it is developing a Ford gasoline-hybrid, as the automaker has slowly but surely been leaving the diesel market. Collins Bus as well as its line of Mid Bus and Corbeil products, have also traditionally built bodies on GM chassis, so it will be interesting to see how the recent deal with Azure Dynamics to develop the gasoline hybrid drive train for Ford will play out. Then there's potential Type A chassis production capabilities at Daimler Truck/Freightliner for Thomas and Navistar for its IC Bus line.

Meanwhile, Girardin Minibus is publicly, at least, reaffirming its relationship with GM because the auto manufacturer is staying true to diesel engine technology, at least in theory. As reported in the July issue of STN, Girardin said it is eyeing a GM diesel-hybrid to compete with Collins' gas-hybrid, the latter expected to be unveiled this summer. GM retained it's two-mode diesel hybrid technology originally slated for the Saturn VUE. This same technology could fuel GM's SUV business, which could in turn have strong implications for the school bus industry.

CARB to Feds: Reinstate Hydrogen Funding

The Green Car Congress published an interesting blog indicating that, if the California Air Resources Board gets its way (which, on a separate note, it did today when the EPA granted a waiver enabling the state to enforce its own greenhouse gas emissions standard), hydrogen fuel cells may not be that far off after all. That is granted Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu's "four miracles" are performed by the scientific community.

Earlier this year, the Obama Administration unveiled its renewable fuel strategy for the next decade, but one alternative energy was blatantly missing: hydrogen fuel cells. Unsurprisingly, when the Department of Energy then released its fiscal year 2010 budget, the federal hydrogen fuel cell research and deployment budget was cut by more than two-thirds ($130 million), and funds were outright eliminated for the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle program and market transformation programs.

This all came not long after the DOE released in February its Fuel Cell School Buses: Report to Congress,” which cited a lack of fuel cell availability as a major obstacle to the technology being ready for the school bus market as well as high costs and questions about durability. DOE Secretary Steven Chu reiterated the basic findings of the study later to MIT Research magazine that "four miracles" needed to occur before hydrogen fuel cell vehicles would be considered viable in transportation, those being fuel cell durability and cost, hydrogen production, hydrogen storage and hydrogen distribution infrastructure.

But CARB recently weighed in on the subject with a visit paid to Chu by CARB Chair Mary Nichols to ask that the funding reinstated. CARB followed up with a letter to the DOE on June 19 highlighting how the issues of cost, production, storage and infrastructure could be solved.