Universal Studios Hollywood using electric vehicles for studio tour trams

This brings me joy. If Disney isn't already working this out for the parking lot fleet I'll be really disappointed. They've been doing electric transportation since the day they opened in Florida.

Never thought of this but I’m a bit surprised this wasn’t done already. Seems like a no brainer for the application.

Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of sitting in the back of the first or front of the second coach in the tram should have thought of this years ago. The lead coach is arguably the best place to sit for seeing the show, but the down side is having to hear the deafening roar of the diesel engine for 45 minutes.

The difficulty is that the vehicles are enormous which means that they have lots of weight to carry around and so would need lots of power. And they have to be able to run all day, every day, open to close. But batteries can be put beneath the floor of every car to increase range, and there are multiple locations along the route where charging can happen: at each of the attraction points, in particular in the Earthquake and Kong scenes, to a lesser degree in the Fast & Furious scene, where the vehicle stops for a bit for the show. And why not have multiple charge points, since there are multiple vehicles?

Conected power can't be used because mostly because the route is not fixed, although much of it is consistent...plus a catenary would be just plain ugly and could interfere with studio operations. The tram roads are accessible to personnel, so any kind of bus-bar on the road would be dangerous. But why not provide buried inductive power on the roads where the trams operate most frequently (or exclusively)? It seems to me that the vehicles could be set up to operate largely on fixed power, with onboard batteries almost as a back-up more than a primary power supply.

Given some of the grades on that lot, I wonder if the trailers are motor driven as well. It works for trains, I wonder if it would work for multi-car road vehicles.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Who wonders when Disneyland is going to replace its parking lot trams with something more like a PeopleMover, or other automated fixed-guideway system...

Electric may be next but I would be surprised if it is anytime soon. They just converted the WDW trams from CNG to Propane about 4-5 years ago.

The WDW trams are actually modified airplane pushers. I forget where I saw that, maybe the official parks blog. Considering Disney is building even more solar, I think low carbon energy is a priority.

RideMan said:

But why not provide buried inductive power on the roads where the trams operate most frequently (or exclusively)?

Isn't that what the press release says they're doing?

Florida State has an all electric bus system. There are overhead charging stations at stops. While they stop to board passengers they can partially recharge...so they have continuous opportunities to do so.

The article mentioned charging at the loading and unloading stations, and using regenerative braking (meaning significant charging for the first five minutes of the trip...I've ridden roller coasters that are not as steep nor as long as the first drop on the USH Tram Tour!) but nothing about charging during show scenes or inductive charging along the route. For this reason I would not be surprised to learn that "charging in the loading area" means hooking a long extension cord to the right-hand side of the lead car.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

It does say they use inductive charging, it just doesn't say where. I imagine they could put it anywhere it stops. And depending on battery capacity, you don't have to fully charge it, you only have to recover enough to get through the day. This is the thing that people often don't understand about road tripping an EV as well. People get hung up on charge time, but the fastest possible charging happens in the mid-range of capacity. You only need to charge enough to get to the next stop.

I did read the article, I promise, but it was a couple of days ago.

With an operation like this, though, charging time...or alternatively, the charge capacity...needs to be enough to last all day, allowing for frequent charging. I'm guessing that even with mid-course charging and regenerative braking, on any given ride cycle they're going to use more power than they can put back in at normal stopping points. But as you point out, that's OK so long as you don't run out before the last ride of the day...and they can charge overnight and top-up throughout the day.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.