SAFRA has developed a service enabling it to offer maintenance services for its customers’ hydrogen fleets.
The customer service department also specializes in optimizing the performance of passenger transport vehicles, thanks to a platform entirely designed and developed by SAFRA: VHYSION®, which helps customers manage their transport vehicle fleets.
Like any other urban mobility vehicle, the full hydrogen bus requires both preventive and corrective maintenance. The vehicle’s chassis, brakes, compressed air and electrical systems, doors and many other components are identical in every respect to what is known in the industry and maintained in conventional workshops by public transport operators. However, certain hydrogen-specific components, such as the fuel cell or battery, require specialist maintenance to ensure not only the vehicle’s condition but also its safety.
The vast majority of hydrogen vehicle checks and maintenance are carried out directly by transport operators. SAFRA provides all its workshop staff with the usual training in vehicle discovery and maintenance, enabling them to handle minor maintenance afterwards.
Whatever their technology, they require no special maintenance. All that’s required is occasional monitoring of their state of health (the famous SOH1 ), to check that they are ageing evenly across the cells. In a hydrogen-powered vehicle, ageing is calendar-based and has little to do with depth of discharge (the DOD2 ), since the cells are only used to a very limited extent, acting only as an energy buffer reservoir to restore additional kW when there is a high demand for power, and also to recover energy generated by the electric motor during braking and deceleration.
no special maintenance, but ageing must be checked, as is done on CNG vehicles with the CID check3.
These are scheduled or hourly checks, depending on vehicle use. The main aim is to visually check the condition of the pipes, and validate the correct operation of the safety sensors (pressure, leakage, temperature), coolant and ionizing cartridge levels, and filter elements. These operations can be carried out by the operator after training, or by the fuel cell supplier during the warranty period, for example.
Full maintenance or tailor-made contracts can be drawn up, giving the operator full financial control over maintenance costs over the long term, as is often the case when launching a new energy sector.
In order to better support its customers, SAFRA has developed a tailor-made service dedicated to the maintenance and monitoring of their vehicle fleets. These services are gathered in a functional and intuitive portal, entirely developed by SAFRA, and marketed under the VHYSION® brand.
This online platform includes 3 service offers: VHYSION Fleet, VHYSION Report and VHYSION Diag.
3 SERVICES
VHYSION Fleet
VHYSION Report
VHYSION Diag
The Fleet service allows you to control and operate the fleet, optimize vehicle availability, and keep operating costs under control.
You have access to a functional dashboard with real-time vehicle information, lifetime, GPS positioning and real-time vehicle defects or information.
The Report service allows you to access numerous reports that allow you to visualize the data of your fleet in real time and export all the data that the software brings up by applying your filters.
The Diag service helps maintainers to resolve faults and visualize faults thanks to data from the connected vehicles, in order to anticipate maintenance and faults and optimize vehicle operations to obtain the best availability rate.
Depending on the package chosen, faults can be acknowledged online.
The platform also provides access to an interactive document area where all vehicle-related documentation is available, from training manuals to user guides.
The Application Program Interface (API) option enables ITxPT data to be integrated directly into customer information systems. This web-based platform is complemented by workshop equipment (tablet and special connectors) supporting off-line diagnostics and maintenance assistance functions.
This highly functional customer portal will enable users to manage their bus fleet in real time, optimizing vehicle performance while controlling operating costs. The VHYSION tool will be directly accessible via the safra.fr website, with secure authentication, all in full compliance with data security, and in particular cyber security.
Associate member of the association ITxPT (Information Technology for Public Transport).
