Skip to main content

Bus record

A methane-powered bus has set a speed record of nearly 124km/h at a test track in the UK. The bus, from the southern city of Reading, was converted to run on compressed methane from cow manure and was painted black and white like a Friesian cow. Mechanics removed the bus’s engine governor that restricted the vehicle’s speed to 90km/h. The bus then broke the record on the banked high-speed circuit at Millbrook Proving Ground, near the city of Bedford. The cow waste was broken down by anaerobic digestion to p
August 21, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
A methane-powered bus has set a speed record of nearly 124km/h at a test track in the UK. The bus, from the southern city of Reading, was converted to run on compressed methane from cow manure and was painted black and white like a Friesian cow. Mechanics removed the bus’s engine governor that restricted the vehicle’s speed to 90km/h. The bus then broke the record on the banked high-speed circuit at Millbrook Proving Ground, near the city of Bedford. The cow waste was broken down by anaerobic digestion to produce biogas, which was then liquefied and stored in several fuel tanks within the expanded roof of the bus. The bus’s speed would not be a Guinness World Record because it failed to exceed 241km/h. But the vehicle did make an appealing sound as it swept past on the track.

Related Content

  • SDMO’s key A-Plant order for 20kVA rental compact generators
    August 27, 2013
    A-Plant, one of the UK’s largest plant and equipment hire companies, has placed orders for a fleet of 20kVA Rental Compact generators and 6.0kVA sets from SDMO Energy, the UK arm of French generator manufacturing giant SDMO Industries. The 20kVA sets are currently being shipped into A-Plant’s depot in Maidstone, south-east England, while the 6.0kVA compact generators are being snapped up by a number of A-Plant’s depots from Dundee and Kilmarnock in Scotland, right down to Cambridge and Romford, southern
  • Weigh in motion systems aid overweight vehicle detection
    July 12, 2012
    Modern weighing equipment helps road operators tackle the costly business of road damage caused by overloaded trucks as Patrick Smith reports. Overloading of commercial vehicles has a major impact on the life expectancy of road networks. The cost of premature road failure and repairs is a major burden on many governments particularly in developing countries where this problem diverts vital funding that could otherwise be spent on health and education.
  • When the rain comes
    July 18, 2012
    Statistics show that wet weather and the dark is not the best mix for driving, but road markings offer a safety solution While good road markings are essential any time of the day, it is perhaps at night when roads are wet that they can offer extra guidance. Statistics are said to reveal that an estimated 50% of all accidents happen during the night when it rains but such conditions occur only 10% of the time and when there are usually less vehicles on the road. Indeed, at the 1st Road Marking Symposium hel
  • CET opens new laboratory to service UK’s infrastructure projects
    October 23, 2017
    With over £300 billion of investment in infrastructure planned over the next four years in the UK, materials testing firm CET is gearing up to service a lot more projects – Kristina Smith visited the newest laboratory near Heathrow to find out more. The CET Group has ambitious plans. Over the next four years it wants to double the size of its business, which in the last year turned over £27 million. “There’s a lot of positivity out there,” said Gary Corrigan, managing director of the group’s infrastructu