'Electric Buses Now Cheaper Than Their Diesel or CNG Counterpart, Could Dominate the Market Within 10 Years' (electrek.co) 382
An anonymous reader shares a report: Transit vehicles today are mostly powered by gasoline, diesel, and CNG, while batteries only represent about 1 percent of the market. It is currently a small part of the industry, but it's also the fastest growing fuel source in the sector and it's starting to become highly competitive. Electric bus maker Proterra is ramping up production and currently claims to be cheaper than diesel and CNG. It leads CEO Ryan Popple to make a bold prediction that battery-powered buses will dominate the transit bus market within 10 years. More specifically, he says that the majority of new bus sales will be electric by 2025 and all new bus sales to transit agencies will be electric by 2030. Proterra has so far only delivered a few hundred all-electric buses, but they have been announcing several major deals lately, like 73 buses from King County's Metro Transit, that seem to indicate there's a shift in the transit industry.
Local Boy (Score:5, Insightful)
As a local boy, King County (Seattle, WA) makes sense for this. The downtown bus routes have overhead wiring. The city already has a vast network of electric buses running, so adding battery operated buses to transition on/off the connected wired network makes sense. They're probably one of the easiest metros to make such a transition.
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Boston has overhead wiring and runs electric busses too... Only their "convertible" busses just switch to diesel power when the wires end.
Re:Local Boy (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, King County Metro buying a bunch of electric busses doesn't "indicate there's a shift", since Metro has been running a significant number of electric busses for decades. With hydro power rather plentiful and relatively cheap, using electric vehicles around here makes sense.
Sound Transit's Link light rail also runs on electricity, for that matter.
On a side note - I always find it mildly amusing (and simultaneously annoying) when my Metro driver has to get out of the bus and deal with a broken electrical connection. Those overhead wired tracks don't seem to be the most reliable system in the world... but I suspect it's just because it's decades old design. Link certainly doesn't have any issues like that.
Obviously (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course electric busses are cheaper. So are electric taxis and other high mileage commercial vehicles. Busses are an even more obvious target for electrification because they are big enough to encompass large battery packs, follow predictable routes and timetables, tend to taxed heavily due to creating a lot of pollution, and cost a lot to start with so the extra for a battery pack is a lower proportion of the overall price.
China is really leading the way here, on track for near 100% EV bus sales by 2020.
Re:Obviously (Score:4, Insightful)
And it is awesome - not only there would be less air polution, but also less noise pollution. A diesel bus is loud.
I just hope that garbage collecting trucks will soon also be fully electric or at least hybrid - it makes a lot of sense because of the constant stop and go, and even hybrids are much quieter than normal diesel trucks.
Just like the flying car too eh? (Score:3)
I'm always dubious of claims like this. There's an XKCD out there conveying exactly why we shouldn't put much stock into this CEO.
However, I will say that I am deeply impressed with the electric buses that run off of an overhead catenary wire. Cities should seriously look into electrifying heavily used bus routes. Easy way to save fuel cash and cut pollution down too.
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Cities should seriously look into electrifying heavily used bus routes.
Er ... no. "heavily used bus routes" tend to have several services along the same road. Sometimes a slow-filling bus on one service needs to be overtaken by another on a different service that does not need to be at the bus stop for so long. That is not possible if they are all trolley buses (overhead catenary buses as you refer to them).
I remember trolley buses in London. They mostly ran on routes in suburbia in radial directions so they did not cross or share any road with each other. Where they share
Charge? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Charge? (Score:5, Funny)
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My local transit authority has a few electric buses and they use them on routes where they can last all day on a single charge. They are very happy with the buses, which they bought 2-3 years ago. However, most of their routes are too long to use electric buses. If the range can improve 15-20%, this opens up a lot of additional routes and they would buy more of them.
The largest fleet of electric buses in my city is actually a private company, which runs a dozen or so on the daily rush hour routes between
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Buses go through predictable routes, so you can put these chargers on the routes (or where routes intersect) and do 15 second charges every pass, if needed.
Electric (Score:3)
I can't imagine the batteries can last all day, do they have swappable battery packs?
They could be swappable. However they also are big enough to have very large battery packs which should last a good long time presuming the power to weight ratio make sense. Also remember that electric does not necessarily mean battery powered. You can draw power from a tap like many light rail systems do and it's still electric.
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keeping the batteries charged may not be that hard (Score:2)
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Battieries are only part of it (Score:2)
Re:Battieries are only part of it (Score:4, Informative)
Some buses run on batteries, but I've seen several systems now for buses that get power from overhead lines (similar to trains). The summary seems to be overlooking these vehicles.
While overhead wires are fine for trains, which have predictable, smooth, well-maintained paths to travel, they are less than optimal for buses.
We have these in Cambridge, MA. They are a hassle because it's a fairly common occurrence that the armature will pop off the overhead wire and the bus will grind to a halt until the driver can go around and use a pole to hook it back on, creating a huge traffic hazard in the meantime. It would be great if they had some battery backup and could limp along to a bus stop before having to be reconnected.
Also, during power failures, every bus stops. This is great when two buses happen to be passing in opposite directions, causing the entire road to be blocked.
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Also, during power failures, every bus stops. This is great when two buses happen to be passing in opposite directions, causing the entire road to be blocked.
If this happens often enough to be even a remote source of concern for your city then the busses are the least of your problem.
SubjectsInCommentsAreStupidCauseTheSubjectIsTFA (Score:2)
Don't let history repeat itself.
What drives the comparative efficiency? (Score:2)
I wish the article had a little more analysis and technical detail. Anyone know what drives the competitiveness of electric buses vs other vehicles? What technology changes are changing this cost equation and how do they impact other vehicle markets?
Why are buses more competitive but cars aren't?
Is this about the ability to recapture energy when braking on electric vehicles? For buses used in cities stopping regularly, I could see this being a big deal.
Do form factor differences allowing better engineeri
Fastest growing share is easy when you start at 0% (Score:2)
"Fastest Growing" is a meaningless term without context...
Winter city testing (Score:5, Informative)
Here in Winnipeg the city Transit service has been testing electric buses for a local coachbuilder for quite a few years with what I have heard to be good results.
http://winnipegtransit.com/en/... [winnipegtransit.com]
King County is also already a large customer for their hybrid diesel-electric buses.
https://www.newflyer.com/buses... [newflyer.com]
If they can work well here in our cold winters and hot summers they can probably work well in most places in North America.
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Engine sounds would be much too annoying. What they need is a spoken warning that runs in a loop: "Careful, incoming vehicle! Careful, incoming vehicle! ..."
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The electric buses in SF are plenty loud, tire noise, old creaky suspension, flexing frame etc etc you can hear them coming, especially as they accelerate up the hills we have out here. They're not as loud as the shitty diesels that they have running around the flatter areas (electric buses are superior from a torque standpoint going up hills) but they're loud enough.
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Well for one, ICE vehicles don't come with a shitload of radioactive byproducts being spewed into the air.
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Well for one, ICE vehicles don't come with a shitload of radioactive byproducts being spewed into the air.
Dirty Coal can be placed hundreds of miles away from people. We could even put it inside of a giant glass bubble where nothing escapes. Besides efficiency of scale, it's much easier to monitor, filter, purify, etc... a small handful of power plants than it is thousands upon thousands of tiny little power plants. We also have the option of doing renewable, biowaste, or even off planet power generation once everything uses electricity.
Re:first (Score:4, Interesting)
If you look at where sales are, China is the biggest manufacturer and user. China is also investing massively in renewables and reducing coal use (hit peak a few years back).
We are already seeing BYD cars in the UK, and busses are soon to follow. Our own manufacturers need to catch up fast.
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Well for one, ICE vehicles don't come with a shitload of radioactive byproducts being spewed into the air.
Neither do coal plants. The radiation is in the ASH, not the fumes, and nearly all of it is in the form of thorium, which is not biologically active, and does not bioaccumulate. If you inadvertently eat some thorium, you will just poop it right back out. Thorium is already pervasive in the environment. Every cubic meter of the earth's crust contains about a gram or so. There are plenty of good reasons to phase out coal, but "radiation" isn't one of them.
.
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False. "Concentrations of uranium [in coal] fall in the range from slightly below 1 to 4 parts per million (ppm)... Thorium concentrations in coal fall within a similar 1–4 ppm range [usgs.gov]"
[citation needed]
transit is (or can be) good (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, but thing is....it is still a BUS.
Doesn't matter what you do to the engine or externals of it...who wants to ride a public transportation bus around sitting next to some smelly bums?!?
In Toronto, Canada, about 2.75M people per day. The entire city basically shuts down if the TTC is not running, and there's major chaos if the subway has issues.
For some deranged reason you think only poor people who cannot afford bathing ride public transit. In Toronto at least, every aspect of society uses it. There are professional sports players (Blue Jays, Raptors) that take transit to work and practice. There are Bay Street (think WallStreet.ca) high rollers that take the TTC (and GO, the regional rai
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I'm guessing.
You can't make guesses to "prove" your point.
You actually stated that the US has more "wide swaths of inhabited land" than Canada? Take a look at the population density of the two. US's is 10x higher than Canada's. (http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=21000)
You do realize that both Canada and US were developed starting at around the same time period so would have similar city layouts and infrastructure? And don't say that Toronto is probably just too small of a city... it's larger than Los Angeles b
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Toronto: ...... city 2,731,571; .Urban 5,132,794; .Metro: 5,928,040
Los Angeles: city 3,971,883; Urban 12,150,996; Metro: 13,131,431
You must be using Common Core math.
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i'd argue that if you have to sit in rush hour traffic twice a day, the infrastructure is not really that well set up. (i.e., not enough lanes for the number of commuters)
subways and trains are much better people movers than buses which in turn are much better people movers than passenger cars.
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Yeah, but thing is....it is still a BUS.
Indeed. TFA says that "in ten years buses will be electric" is a "bold prediction". Nonsense. Here is a bold prediction: In ten years buses will be gone. When (or if) self-driving technology takes off, buses will be replaced with much smaller vehicles that take one, or a few, passengers from wherever they are to exactly where they want to go whenever they want to go there. Since there is no driver to pay, this will likely be cheaper than current bus fare. No one will want walk ten minutes to stand in
Re:first (Score:4, Insightful)
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I agree with ShanghaiBill, plus
And the inconvenience factor of buses increases exponentially if you have children and multiple destinations.
Note to the people who'll say kids can travel alone on subway, bus, etc now. That's sort of true, but they have age cut-offs, but many require that child have someone meet them at the destination, but I have no one to meet them. Plus, where I live, it's a stupid thing to do.
I also expect we'll have a solution from the self-driving sector to handle children. Whatever the
Prove your case (Score:2)
Due to efficiencies of scale the worst coal power plants to EV systems are still likely to be twice a pollutant efficient as a ICE vehicle.
Citation needed. That also isn't a particularly meaningful comparison since only about 1/3 of US power comes from coal. It's quite possible to power an EV entirely with non-fossil fuel sources.
Yes I am using hyperbole and I would welcome someone with enough time to disprove me.
No thanks. You made the claim. Cite your source and prove your case. Don't ask us to do your homework for you.
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Due to efficiencies of scale the worst coal power plants to EV systems are still likely to be twice a pollutant efficient as a ICE vehicle.
Citation needed. That also isn't a particularly meaningful comparison since only about 1/3 of US power comes from coal. It's quite possible to power an EV entirely with non-fossil fuel sources.
Yes I am using hyperbole and I would welcome someone with enough time to disprove me.
No thanks. You made the claim. Cite your source and prove your case. Don't ask us to do your homework for you.
It depends on region. First about half the emissions come from manufacture with EV having a slightly larger foot print so keeping any current vehicles in service is much better than simply throwing them away. Second in the USA electric vehicle emissions as Gallons/mile equivelant range from the mid 30s to well over 100. Where I live (Midwest USA) it's around 38-42 mpg equivelant so buying an electric car is worse than buying a hybrid and about the same as buying a fuel efficient gas vehicle, the gas vehi
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See this report [nytimes.com] for example; excerp - "About 37 percent of Americans live in regions where a Leaf’s greenhouse gas emissions would equate to a gasoline-powered vehicle rated at 41 to 50 m.p.g.". That's about what I get from my diesel car, which is a 2 litre sporty car that delivers a lot more performance than a Leaf while delivering 45mpg. And that's taking the grid in those areas as a whole; it probably isn't 100% coal even in the worst places. So I'm afraid you're wrong.
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Hm, is it by any chance a Volkswagen or an Audi? Are you sure about those carbon numbers?
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...my diesel car, which is a 2 litre sporty car that delivers a lot more performance than a Leaf while delivering 45mpg. And that's taking the grid in those areas as a whole; it probably isn't 100% coal even in the worst places. So I'm afraid you're wrong.
For the consumer electric is a cheaper "fuel" than gas or diesel. Tree-huggers and climate-deniers can argue all they want about carbon footprints, but it doesn't matter because it's the green cash in people's wallets that will make EVs happen.
Also, you might be surprised at the performance of a Leaf (or any electric car)... it's worth a test drive at a dealer for curiosity's sake if nothing else. I own a Leaf, and while it's by no means a Tesla, it's still quite fast off the line as it has the electric ad
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unless it's wind/solar/wave
Those are unlikely to provide enough power when you need it (I assume batteries would be charged in the early morning hours when there is little demand for the buses). On the other hand, hydroelectric and nuclear are zero emissions and very dependable.
As an aside, this headline is a great example of Fake News. Note that it doesn't actually say electric buses are cheaper and could dominate the market; it only quotes a guy who manufactures electric buses making that claim.
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Which is why there are large energy storage [wikipedia.org] solutions. Heck, the OP left out hydropower, which is the largest clean renewable energy source in the US today. In Canada, hydro is the largest source of electricity, period.
And no, it's not fake news, it's just poor journalism because they're parroting an unsupported claim. There's nothing to indicate that it isn't true or was simply created from whole cloth.
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Re:first (Score:4, Informative)
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So... Why not just use regenerative breaking in a Hybrid solution and get the best of both? Oh wait, they already do that... Only the guy quoted in this article doesn't sell that kind of buss....
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It's ok - after the brakes are broken, they regenerate. He DID said regenerative breaking!
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At least for the region mentioned (King County / Seattle WA), we're almost entirely hydro electric thanks to the Grand Coulee Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] - I know others around the world are not so lucky.
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The whole point is that you break the dependency on fossil fuels. The electricity can come from any source. Today it may come from coal, tomorrow it may be nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal or some other source.
Choose your power source (Score:2)
Too much gets said about how great electrically powered vehicles are, but they're only zero emission at point o suse.
And what is your point? Electric vehicles can be powered by both/either fossil fuels or non-emitting sources of power. Nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, etc are all potential sources of generation, none of which emit substantial carbon during normal operation. Roughly 1/3 of power in the US comes from non-fossil fuel sources so right off the bat your emissions drop by up to 1/3 per vehicle. And it's a lot easier to control emissions from 1 power plant than millions of little engines. Electric ve
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"Give everyone solar panels and battery storage overnight and there will be enough grid capacity to handle the additional load."
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Not enough gets said? In every single article in Slashdot about electric vehicles a paid shill like you comes forward and claims that EVs actually pollute more than a Hummer running on baby seal blood.
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It's remarkably easy to buy renewable-only power from renewable sources. It all feeds in to the same grid, but the bill comes from the renewable sources. Since there's a limited supply of renewable power that companies and people are trying to buy from it tends to cost 1-5% more than normal electricity, but you're using only green sources of power.
When I lived in Dallas for 7 years I got my power from Green Mountain energy and cost about 4% more than regular energy, but my house was 100% renewable
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According to this [eia.gov] it looks like the vast majority comes from hydro, with nuclear and non-hydro renewables about tied (the nuclear energy being the Columbia Nuclear Generating Station that is only a couple miles from Hanford), with natural gas and coal bringing up the rear, also about tied.
Running electric buses in Seattle, a place that has had electric "bendy" buses using overhead catenary wire for decades, makes a whole lot of sense.
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You aren't wrong, but the efficiency of fixed energy generation is far higher than your average internal combustion engine. Even a gasoline electrical generator will outperform, because it can run at it's most efficient RPM, and has a fixed load on the output.
Electric vehicles are the future, even if they are powered by today's fuels.
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I don't care that much. It's about money. If they're cheaper then they'll take over.
Re:first (Score:4, Insightful)
Too much gets said about how great electrically powered vehicles are, but they're only zero emission at point o suse. Not enough gets said about where the electricity to charge those batteries comes from - unless it's wind/solar/wave, then it's actually quite a lot of emissions in the overall system.
Why do you believe that? It seems every Slashdot article about electric vehicles has someone making this point. However, converting all of the world's power grids to renewable energy only solves 30% of the problem. [epa.gov] By converting transportation to electricity and converting the power grids to renewable energy eliminates the majority of carbon emissions. We should do both.
You appear to be completely dismissing the value of electric vehicles because our electric grid doesn't have enough renewable energy. However, we have the resources to tackle both of these issues at once, and it seems to me we are succeeding.
Slashdot is not ignoring [slashdot.org] renewable [slashdot.org] energy, [slashdot.org] but electric transportation is important too.
Which makes more sense? (Score:3)
Even if all electricity were to come directly from coal, which do you think would add more pollutants to the atmosphere? A million cars, each with a little dinky catalytic converter on them, or a few coal plants with gigantic industrial scrubbers that are not limited by size/space/weight constraints?
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Renewable energy is the way of the near future. But that is no reason to oppose the Keystone Pipeline. We need carbon based fuel in the now. Let's produce it here. Make jobs here. Don't send money to the Saudi religious nuts. And use the tax revenue from said production to fund alternative solutions.
Re immigration? When do you say no? When we have a 500 million people (in 30 yrs) or 1 billion people (in 70 years)?
Who gets to decide? The peop
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"they spend billions in spreading their religious zeal to mosques around the world" - not unlike all the missionaries the catholics sent around the world to indoctrinate
False equivalency.
How many terrorist attacks/car-bombings/mass shootings/suicide bombings have Christians performed in the last 50 years against non-Christians simply because they were not Christian?
The major and most relevant difference between Islam and Christianity in this context is that Christianity went through reformations to be compatible with modern civilization, whereas Islam has not. Christians do not kill apostates nor tax/enslave non-Christians, nor throw homosexuals off rooftops or stone women
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What a beautiful world this will be [youtube.com]
Re:Incorrect! (Score:5, Insightful)
Public transportation will always have a place in civilization, but it will never replace personal transportation. Electric vehicles are not only more efficient and non-polluting in and of themselves, they're also lower maintenance and quieter; they are the future and we should embrace it. Concerns about where the energy comes from are temporary problems; re-introduction of nuclear power, in the form of redesigned, safer fission reactors, is also something we need to embrace, rather than succumbing to the 'nuclear boogieman' of the past. Continuing to research and develop energy storage systems will also help. So-called 'renewable' sources like solar and wind will supplement and tide us over until the new generation of reactors can be brought on-line. Meanwhile we'll continue to chase practical fusion power, and other more exotic sources of energy.
Human nature and fission (Score:2, Insightful)
re-introduction of nuclear power, in the form of redesigned, safer fission reactors, is also something we need to embrace, rather than succumbing to the 'nuclear boogieman' of the past.
You talk about human nature wanting personal vehicles and then take exactly the opposite argument here. Human nature doesn't change just because its convenient for your argument. People are afraid of nuclear fission whether or not those fears are justified. That is human nature and it is unlikely to change. And their fears are not without some rational basis in many cases. The problem with fission as a power source is simply that when it goes wrong it can go REALLY wrong. Given that humans are imperfe
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This attitude will change when we see China clean its air by going nuclear.
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The majority of people are poor, so using a form of transportation that poor people use is pretty natural for them. However, the main problem with most public transport is that it sucks. Where it doesn't, everybody uses it, rich and poor, just like they do the sidewalks.
Re:Incorrect! (Score:5, Informative)
...the main problem with most public transport is that it sucks...where it doesn't, everybody uses it, rich and poor...
I ride with everyone from poor moms with 2 kids in strollers and homeless folks to guys in 3 piece suits with $500 pairs of shoes. In between are everyone else from high school kids to college kids, and the breadth of the middle and upper-middle class workforce.
I bus about 35 minutes each way. I could drive that in 20-25 minutes, and there's an added 5-10 minute walk/wait on each end for the bus. End result is that I spend 80-90 minutes per day commuting on the bus for $50/month vs 40-50 minutes driving for ~$150/month (parking, gas, & wear and tear). The added advantage to busing is that I can do ~30 minutes of work each way, putting out fires before/after work, dropping an hour off my work day in the process.
So the end result is that I spend about as much time away from home busing as I would driving, for $100/month less. And that $100 can go straight into one of the bars or restaurants on the way home, an added perk of not having to drive.
Part of why I chose to live here was the investment in public transportation. When I consider moving jobs, I look at the commute possibilities as one factor. I'm generally not willing to give up my life and sanity driving in rush hour traffic. The year I did that I was far more stressed and angry than I ever was before or after. It's going to take a pretty significant pay raise to make me want to do that again.
Re:Incorrect! (Score:5, Informative)
I ride with everyone from poor moms with 2 kids in strollers and homeless folks to guys in 3 piece suits with $500 pairs of shoes. In between are everyone else from high school kids to college kids, and the breadth of the middle and upper-middle class workforce.
Generally I've found the people who complain most about public transport are the ones brought up in towns/suburbs designed around the car, and hence the public transport options do suck. I lived in Singapore for a couple of years and hardly anyone owns a car because there is no point. Public transport is faster, cleaner, safer, cheaper and more reliable than any other option. And it is the only transport option that scales in larger denser population centres.
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[public transportation] it's viewed as something that poor people use,
Not in England, Washington DC and surrounding metropolitan area, or New York.
I would agree with you if you said "buses" but not if you say "public transportation."
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Joe sixpack doesn't give a damn about what makes his car move as long as it's cheap.
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Because they are so efficient that even when they're coal powered they are still releasing less CO2 then diesel powered buses. Also, the air in cities gets a lot cleaner and healthier when ICEs are banned.
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You DO understand that battery recycling is a messy dangerous and toxic business right?
You are dealing with an input that is a mixture of corrosive electrolytes, metal parts and plastic which is not easily disassembled in a safe way. Once you manage to separate the stuff, you have to then refine the metals, neutralize the corrosive materials and deal with the huge amounts of industrial waste all this creates in a safe and environmentally responsible manner. It's not usually easy..
For instance, lead acid
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Caramel Nitrogen Gagh
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You must have checked a loooooong time ago.
Electric-car battery costs: Tesla $190 per kwh for pack, GM $145 for cells [greencarreports.com].
That's still $125,400 in batteries if we use Tesla's prices but it's nearly four times less than you thought.
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Re:How is this supposed to work? (Score:5, Informative)
If you'd bothered to actually go to the Proterra website and read up on the topic, you'd not have posted your rant. Amongst other things, they can fast-charge in five to 15 minutes using an overhead fastcharger that can be located at bus-stops. Considering that bus drivers need breaks, and there are often
built-in delays at route-end to support the schedule, a 15 minute recharge for 300 mile range once or twice a day works quite well.
Re:How is this supposed to work? (Score:5, Interesting)
I caught a taxi from Schipol Airport one day, an all Tesla fleet. I asked them how they get around given the limited range of an electric car. The answer was easy: Taxis actually aren't rolling at high speed the entire day. They average between 300-600km / day. They have a company 3 company mandated breaks, one of them is 30min. They take that lunch break at the Amsterdam Zuid-Ost Supercharger. No one in the fleet has ever run out of power or had to take their vehicle off the road when it could have been serving customers.
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Most routes round here have an interchange or large station at one or both ends, usually with at least 10 minute waits. So they could be topped up through the day. There is also the idea of inductive pads at each bus stop. Even if electric buses currently only worked on 50% of routes that would be a nice saving in emissions.
In addition to your excellent points, buses have the ability to change their routes, unless they use overhead electric power, without any infrastructure costs beyond a few signs. By redesigning routes you could probably add in enough time to do a quick charge, without disrupting travel. Bus companies have a lot of passenger use data that can be used to redo routes to make electric busses viable on most routes..
Re:How is this supposed to work? (Score:5, Interesting)
Buses and other large vehicles use most of their fuel accelerating. Electric buses and freight trucks actually can coast for a hell of a long time on barely any fuel, but have to stop and then accelerate frequently. Regenerative braking diminishes this cost, extending service life on a battery charge.
Buses are complex and require motor and drive train maintenance. Drive trains in electric vehicles are vastly-simpler--no gearbox--and hub motors provide an option amounting to wiring and an electrical control box. Far less maintenance, far less wear, longer service lives.
It would make sense to swap out entire buses rather than batteries. Bus drivers need a food break every 4-5 hours; rotating them back to the depot and putting them back on power would allow substantial recharging. Some of these buses can recharge 100% in under an hour; and for buses going into service to meet peak demand, you'll end up with them coming in and out at different times during the day, allowing you to keep a turn-over reserve: a bus comes in, plugs into charging, and an hour later the driver takes a bus that hasn't gone out yet; two hours later, the guy who came in for lunch break when that new bus departed takes the bus he left behind, which has had two hours to charge. This reserve fleet also allows deployment of a new bus if one suffers mechanical breakdown, which is generally standard; meanwhile the amount of miles driven in total is spread among more buses, giving them a larger service life.
The logistics aren't that ridiculous.
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Sarcasm aside, I'm starting to be glad that Peter Thiel is close to Trump. Theil is friends with Musk, who of course is leading on electric cars. Seems unlikely that Trump will kill electric cars with that influ
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They are the most delicate of delicate snowflakes.
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In this kind of direct weight-for-weight comparison, you should calculate the total weight of the propulsion system with the energy source.
Combustion engine + fuel weight VS electric motor + battery weight.
I'm sure someone with a better knowledge of engines would probably add other components than the engine alone, like the carburator, etc.
Also, we're talking city buses here, not privately owned cars that people use for long drives. So the usual anti-electric-cars arguments just don't apply here.
I'm not sur
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Someone needs to search for "coal is mostly only used in third-world countries".
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Incomplete sentence, cannot be parsed.
Or Maybe just the opposite... (Score:2)
Lithium is more common in Earth's crust than lead. Plus unlike coal and oil, you use it over and over again and can be reclaimed after batteries are no longer rechargeable (or obsoleted by newer technology). Any shortages are just because we haven't ramped up mining/recovery of it. Once demand is really there we will probably extract it from sea water where it is in relative abundance (and fare less destructive than your apocalyptic mining hyperbole would be).
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We already know what it means, people posted that information a few posts earlier. It's either Colour Neutral Graphics, Cauliflower Naturel Garland, Caramel Nitrogen Gagh or Convoluted Neutrino Guacamole.
But thanks for your additional definition.
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Well we need some buses now, people can't wait N years for a self driving car infrastructure to appear. If we have to throw all the new buses out in 10 years, fine at least we had a working bus system for those 10 years.