У этого автобуса не было ни двигателя, ни аккумуляторов — только полторы тонны вращающейся стали ...

There is no engine in this bus. No diesel, no petrol, no combustion of any kind — no cylinder block, no fuel tank, no exhaust. There are no batteries either. Not one cell anywhere in the vehicle. And no overhead wires above it, no rails in the road. What powers it is a single steel disc, lying flat in the middle of the bus, spinning on a horizontal axis. It is 1.6 metres across, weighs one and a half tonnes — about the same as a family car — and at full charge it is turning at 3,000 rpm. That is the entire energy supply. Nothing is being consumed. Just a very heavy wheel going round very fast, and when it slows down, the bus stops. To recharge, the driver pulls up at a stop, three booms rise from the roof and touch conductors on a post, and electricity spins the wheel back up. Thirty seconds to three minutes, and the bus drives away. This is the Gyrobus, and it carried fare-paying passengers in Switzerland, Belgium and the Belgian Congo from 1953. You'll discover why Switzerland wanted electric transport without wires, why a flywheel charges instantly when a battery cannot, and what happens to a bus's handling when there's a gyroscope under the floor resisting every turn. And why it charged faster than any electric bus can today — but still failed. Subscribe for more engineering worth telling properly. #Gyrobus #FlywheelEnergy #TransportHistory Tags gyrobus,flywheel bus,oerlikon,bjarne storsand,flywheel energy storage,yverdon les bains,ghent,leopoldville,electric bus,kinetic energy storage,trolleybus,swiss engineering,regenerative braking,gyroscopic effect,bus documentary,forgotten engineering,transport history,mechanical battery,fbw chassis,flemish tram museum,1950s buses,zero emission,public transport history,energy storage,grandson