High-voltage defibrillator standard
Falck, which as a provider of ambulance and healthcare services, operates more than 5,000 vehicles in 35 countries. It recently set out to develop an all-electric ambulance.
The company decided to use Tesla Model X as a base. The car was retrofitted with the required equipment and – because apparently there’s still not enough energy in main battery – Falck installed:
- an additional auxiliary power source for on-board devices
”We drive with a separate power system in the car, which means that all equipment is operated without using the car’s own battery. Emergency lights and sound, radio, medical equipment and cooling/heating equipment run in a closed system which is charged at departure, while a Fuel Cell recharges while driving and staying outside the garage,” - a separate heating system that uses methanol
”So even on frosty winter days on the highway, where the EMT must wait for the rescue team to release a patient from a car, before he can be loaded into the ambulance, we can guarantee that a warm car is ready for the patient. This is a very important element in the electric ambulances of the future,”
The tests are currently conducted in Denmark and soon the Tesla Model X will be used for patient transport around Copenhagen thanks to an agreement with the Capital Region.
Jakob Riis, CEO of Falck said:
“In Falck we wish to use less fuel. It is beneficial both for the environment and the economy, and since no one else in the world has made an electric ambulance, we have had to develop one ourselves,”.
“I expect to see more of this in ambulance tenders, too. And we will be better prepared than anyone else. We have the desire and duty to develop the ambulance services and I am pleased that we already have the first electric car in operation,”
“It is being tested in real-life emergency driving with rapid acceleration and hard braking and it has never been done before. We are testing it and beginning the development of an ambulance for lying patient transport at the same time”.
Source: falckglobal.mynewsdesk.com
This article originally appeared on Inside EVs.