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China Unveils World’s First Hydrogen-Powered Tram

The fact their fast growing economy is affecting the environment in quite a bad way we all know. We also know that China recently agreed with even harsher measures to reduce the country’s carbon emissions. It does seem that investing in new ways of constructing a sustainable transport does pay off, since the communist country just presented what is most likely the world’s first hydrogen-fueled tram.
China Unveils World’s First Hydrogen-Powered Tram 1 photo
Photo: http://china.org.cn
We are looking at the world’s second-largest country by land area, a lot of kilometers to cover. Slowly switching public transportation to greener, more sustainable ways is something that the entire planet is looking into after all.

And China is being left behind in the line of countries facing environmental problems, with around 90 percent of its cities falling below the threshold for air safety standards in 2014, according to the Chinese Environmental Protection Ministry.

Getting back to our green boy, the world’s first tram powered by hydrogen energy just rolled off the production line at a CSR Qingdao Sifang Co plant in Qingdao, Shandong province. Even though Toyota is already appling hydrogen-fueled technology on their Mirai, none of the companies involved in the transportation industry have managed to find a way to use it on bigger scale vehicles such as trams.

According to Liang Jianying, the chief engineer of the Sifang Company, a subsidiary of China’s South Rail Corporation, the green tram was built in Qingdao, a city 650 kilometers southeast of the capital Beijing. “It took two years for Sifang to solve key technological problems, with the help of research institutions,” Liang said according to Russia Today.

Other than the fact Hydrogen is a resource our planet has in abundance and that there’s nothing else than water coming out of the exhaust, it appears the tram will also be time-efficient.

A three-minute refuel will offer enough power for the tram to run about 100 kilometers, at a top speed of around 70 km/h. Liang said the average tramcar line in China is about 15 kilometers long, in other words one refill will last for three round trips. Each tram has 60 seats and is capable of carrying at least 380 passengers. Sounds pretty good to us!

We’re wondering if the US is cooking anything similar, since we are quite the polluters ourselves.

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