Passengers praise the Fuso Aero Star Eco Hybrid for its quiet and smooth operation.

Airport shuttle: Aero Star Eco Hybrid at work

The Mitsubishi Fuso Aero Star Eco Hybrid was recently put into operation as a shuttle bus at Haneda Airport in Tokyo. Atsushi Oide’s eyes fill with pride as the vehicle rolls up almost noiselessly. Oide is the bus operations manager at Keihin Kyuko Bus Co., Ltd., which operates the ecological vehicle at the airport. Oide says the buses’ environmentally friendly image is very important to his company, whose approximately 1,000 buses make it one of Japan’s leading private operators.

“Many customers praise the driver for how smoothly and quietly the bus accelerates,” says Oide. “Vroom, vroom,” adds bus driver Hideto Yanagisawa as he imitates a conventional bus accelerating and shifting gears. He follows this up with a brief choreography of humming and gestures to indicate the smooth running of the hybrid bus. Obviously, our Japanese interpreter doesn’t need to translate anything here. Oide also informs us that drivers are specially trained to operate the bus in an environmentally conscious manner. This makes sense, as drivers of the hybrid shuttle bus clock some 300 km (almost 200 miles) per day transporting roughly a thousand passengers.