Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Bus Engine Trouble?

I know most of you are wondering why the bus engines are suddenly shut down because I was and a friend of mine asked me probably thinking I'll have the answer to it since I'm Korean and know what's going on.. but to tell you the truth, I was clueless as all of you were. Well, my first instinct was maybe the bus just went kaput but I noticed a sticker on the bus saying "시동뚝? 걱정 뚝! (engine trouble? don't worry!)" and well, I also asked my mom because I didn't understand the logic to it. what the sticker said was that it's to prevent the engine from running idle. BUT my logic was, if you do that wouldn't that result in inefficient use of gas?
Well, apparently I was wrong, what really happens is by automatically shutting off the engine it saves the fuel cost plus it's actually doing some good to our environment since it exhausts less CO2. I don't exactly know the technology behind it but from what I hear the buses have an automatic system installed in them to shut down their engines when they are stopped at a red light or stopped in traffic and once they step on the clutch the engine starts up again. I searched on the net for some info and it says that about 7600 buses have this system and through it they're saving up to 5% of fuel cost which is equivalent to about 13billion won. They're still working on extending this to taxis and automobiles in order to save our ozone layer.

So, the next time you experience a sudden engine shut down on our public buses, don't worry, they're doing everyone a favour! ;)

4 comments:

  1. I noticed that they do this in Japan. At first, I had the same thought: engine trouble.

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  3. I've been wondering about this. Just today I asked a Korean about it. She didn't know the answer.

    Thanks for the timely post.

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