The new Thermo King Athenia AM HVAC platform, the Athenia AMII Series, helps fleets cut fuel costs and improve reliability by 50%, according to the company.

This new heating, ventilation and air conditioning platform provides a 10%  weight reduction and features a design that reduces installation time while enabling improvements in serviceability to reduce maintenance costs.

“Thermo King developed this innovative solution to provide more dependable, energy efficient solutions that can be easily serviced,” said Steve Johnson, product manager for transit and coach HVAC at Thermo King. “The Athenia AMII provides improvements in coil design, air flow and high ambient performance.  The new platform also will offer brazed aluminum, micro-channel condensers as standard in 2014 which will bring further improvements in weight and performance.”

The new platform will be available for all conventional applications in late 2013 and forelectric applications in early 2014. The conventional and electric unit platforms will provide solutions for all bus types including standard diesel and compressed natural gas (CNG) buses, parallel and series hybrid electric buses, battery and trolley buses.Additionally, the new AMII will be available with the alternator driven all-electric HVAC as the all-electric HVAC solution for diesel and CNG buses.

The new unit offers 6% more airflow as part of high-performance condenser and evaporator offerings. The system also features a motorized water valve to optimize temperature control in both heat and re-heat modes.

A new electronic capacity control module will be standard with the X426, X430 and X640 reciprocating compressors. This feature enables users to gain fuel savings in light load conditions by controlling excess capacity.

The platform also features the Thermo King exclusive screw compressor, R407C and R134a refrigerants, and IntelligAire III advanced microprocessor controller.