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California District Launches Country's First All-Electric School Bus
joe5 writes "Well, leave it the golden state. The Kings Canyon (near Squaw Valley) Unified School District recently launched the first all-electric school bus in the United States. The bus is a modified SST Trans Tech model based on a Ford E-Series van chassis — and Motiv Power Systems created the electric drive train. (The project was a collaboration between those two companies plus the California Air Resources Board.) The electric bus can carry 25 students with an estimated range of 80 to 100 miles— and while it costs more than a standard combustion engine version, is expected to save about 16 gallons of fuel per day. Thanks to a federal highway program, three more electric buses are on their way to the Kings Canyon district and similar programs are in the works in both Chicago and New York."
Many EVs let you turn on the heating remotely or on a timer, so that the vehicle is warmed up while it is still plugged in and charging. Then it only needs to maintain that temperature, which requires a lot less energy. The charge process itself also generates a fair bit of heat which can be used.
Have a read of some of the EV forums. Electric cars are pretty popular in northern European countries where it gets very cold for much of the year, not least because they have this feature and tend to work more reliably than ICE cars.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You'd need battery warmers to weather the overnight cold, but assuming they'd be plugged in to charge during the worst overnight cold, the battery heater would be running during the lowest temperatures with the standard use procedure.
The real question is what happens if you get a cold snap in the middle of the day. Since most suburban school districts stagger the school day for elementary, middle, and junior/senior high schools to minimize the size of their bus fleets, it's quite conceivable that these things would be on the road for close to 8 hours straight without a chance to recharge in between the morning and afternoon commutes.
That might be the case, but it might also not be the case.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Since buses are so big, seems they are a good candidate to add an on-board range extender engine, for those trips that might exceed battery range.
Also, seems they also have lots of roof surface area where PV could be installed, to also help with range, or running accessories, or charging when just parked in fleet parking lots, or at destinations.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
I remember getting big whiffs of diesel exhaust while crossing between busses when I was in school (not on purpose, had to twice daily to get to/leave school). That can't be good for developing minds.
Too bad 80-100 miles doesn't cut it for out here. Half of our busses go 20-30 miles out of town to pick up kids, some go 50 miles out.
Great for in town routes though.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Most districts have bus garages where they store their buses overnight, you typically heat that area anyways for the maintenance crew.
even if you don't heat the garage, just being in a structure will help cut some of the cold. My old pickup has a manual transmission that gets stiff in cold weather, to the point that i have to warm the engine for 10-20 minutes when the temp is under 10F just for the shifter to move right. In the garage the time is at the lower number, but, when i park outside, the higher number is more common.
at the very least, a school bus would probably be a ideal use for this type of tech. Predictable loop runs, twice a day, stored in the garage(and charging) while school is in session.
There are always outliers where this is going to be the case, but llikely the vast majority of school buses in urban areas could be replaced by something like this with lower running costs.
Now, you didn't say where you lived or if you had done a proper analysis of how they were collecting students.. but considering the cost of driving a bus such a distance, might it not be cheaper to collect the more distant students in a smaller vehicle?
I was responding to the first part of your post, sorry, just read the second. wow, can't believe i missed it.
My thought on that, is that they would use that bus for the shorter range routes, 100 miles, while it seems small, would probably be fine.
You can paint it yellow, but it's still a really-short bus. That might make sense for very low-density areas, but I was surprised when I needed to hire a school bus for a Scout event last year that the newer full-sized buses actually get pretty amazing mileage. At 10-15 MPG, it's terrible for a car, but when you're carrying 60+ people, that's fantastic. Especially considering you can still buy a pickup truck that gets similar mileage. I was expecting the answer to come back at "7MPG highway" or something more proportional to automotive mileage.
Kudos to the anonymous mechanical engineers who design these things. I suspect it would be really hard to build a full-sized EV bus that used less total fuel, considering the transmission and charging losses, and the fuel equivalence for the additional wealth needed to purchase such a thing.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Especially when you add in lower maintenance costs for an electric vehicle.
I've often wondered if combustible fuel heaters would make sense on electric vehicles. I know that seems backwards, but where ICE's are very inefficient, especially as utilized in motor vehicles, burning fuel for heat is very efficient. Also external combustion has very low emissions (other than CO2 of course).
Undoubtedly people would ridicule such an idea, complain it's no longer zero emissions (not that electric vehicles are either, depending on how the electricity is generated), blah, blah, blah, but it might make engineering sense. That's particularly true for very cold areas, because not only do you need more thermal power in such places, but heat pumps become less efficient as the temperature difference rises.
I've long thought this is an obvious application for electric vehicles, what with predictable routes and whatnot. Another one would be the small local delivery mail trucks, especially as those things are constantly stopping and starting - a very inefficient way to use an ICE, and one which puts a lot of wear on the engine.
Small town in the middle of nowhere. When I was in highschool there were something like 75-100 students living 25+ miles out of town. The furthest out kids had 2-3hour bus rides (due to stops).
Combine with winter temperatures that sometimes strands normal buses by freezing the diesel fuel into a gelatinous blob, I sadly predict electric buses will never come to this chunk of the US.
Though I do hope electric buses take off in places that can utilize them. The bus barns that maintain a school's fleet would be wonderful sources of performance data. Info like that could help design better systems for all electric vehicles.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Assuming all the energy is generated via coal, it would generate about two thirds of the carbon emissions. On one hand you have vastly improved efficiency of the power plant vs. the diesel engine. On the other hand, petrol is rich in hydrogen which burns to water, while coal is pure carbon so it will generate more CO2 for the same energy. If you use natural gas (CH4), then it drops to about half what the Diesel engine would generate.
A more realistic view would take the energy whole mix into consideration, which also includes Hydro, nuclear, renewables, etc. An even more interesting question is to think on the margin: how will the energy market react to a consistent marginal increase in consumption ? Will it add more nuclear and solar plants or will burn more coal ?
Another thing to consider is the start-stop nature of the workload: this is the environment the electric motor shines because it naturally lends to regenerative breaking. You have no idle burn at the traffic lights and no coupling inefficiency due to the discrete nature of the gearbox. The electric motor turns electricity into mechanical energy with over 90% efficiency, almost all of it moves the vehicle forward, and much of it can be recovered during breaking. These fact alone can skew the calculation by a factor of 2:1 - 3:1 in favor of the electric engine.
It's rather speculative, but a good inference can be made simply from the vast reduction in the number of moving parts.
Says you. I remember our president Bush Jr. got on bus looking just like that. I remember him saying, "Little Yellow Buses Rock!"
All Hale the Tea Party! XD
Like most stories about electric busses, electric trucks and electric cars, this one includes no useful information about cost. Who thinks that without a taxpayer handout, this thing makes any economic sense to the Kings Canyon Unified School District?
Pure Pork.
Something to do with electricity.
We'll call it the "Short Bus".
Have gnu, will travel.
Doubt there is anything for a bus like this, but if you look at a Prius there is quite a bit of data on the maintenance costs.
The rengertice breaking saves on brake pad wear, to the point that Toyota reports they don't need replacment till 100,000 miles. The Power Shift transmission has fewer gear sets, resulting in less wear on them, and has no clutch, CVT belt, or torque converter. Plus there is no timing belt, alternator, starter. And since the ICE is not running all the time it's experiences less wear and Toyota reports you don't need to replace the coolant till around the 8 year mark.
Of course this is countered by the lump sum of the battery and expensive dealership rates for when repairs are needed; but this wouldn't be a comparable factor on this kind of bus since you'd need the manufacturer to repair it regardless; and the poor MPG the old ones had would more then makeup the cost of a replacement battery years down the line.
fantastic comment...why in the world would you post as AC?
+3 awesome
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
It depends on where you are. In some parts of the US, hydro and nuclear make up a very large part of grid power.
I can see how the alternator and starter were removed and replaced with more modern components leveraging the electric assist, Keep in mind that the timing belt did not go through this kind of transformation. Instead the designers used a timing chain instead of a timing belt, this is a common design practice across ICEs and shouldn't be attributed to the electric motor.
$400K for a short bus? Sure, it saves $11K per year on fuel costs (minus electric cost which isn't in the story) but still, a conventional bus of that size is around $50K so paying an extra $350K seems like an excessive amount for the extra greenness.
No matter where you go, there you are.
A bit more than an electric train moving the same weight and a lot less than a 1950s electric "trolleycar" or tram.
Next question?
California at present gets less than half of its electricity from fossil fuel sources and most of that is from natural gas. According to Wikipedia in 2011 8.4% of their electricity was from coal and 36.5% was from natural gas. I can only presume based on California politics that those percentages have dropped a bit since then.
Excellent comment but I still find it grating when the word "break" gets used where "brake" is correct and vice versa.
If the bus has a useful range of 80-100 miles and would otherwise consume 16 gallons to cover those 80-100 miles, that puts the MPG of the bus at between 5-6 MPG...
Seriously? They drive school buses that are THAT inefficient?
Ken
You really think there are 40 year-old busses on the road carrying school children?
Trust me, that is not the case.
Ken
Are we including battery replacement in this imaginary 'reduced maintenance cost' scenario?
Ken
What do you imagine a replacement battery pack will cost for a school bus? And remember, you'll be going through batteries like no one's business because school buses are run for (typically) two runs in the morning and two runs in the afternoon, requiring probably two complete charges in a 24 hour period, five days a week, 40 weeks a year...
That's a lot of batteries.
Ken
How many kids could you get in such a bus?
Ken
No, they don't - they really, really don't.
I can't imagine a single school district that can justify the expense of such a structure - it is more cost-effective to leave them outside.
Ken
Where is most electricity generated in the alternative methods you listed?
Ken
What do you imagine a replacement battery pack will cost for a school bus?
On the order of $0.10/Wh, by the time it matters. Modern Li cells are outlasting anyone's expectations in traction applications; they're not the weak link that you imply.
Actually, E-Series short buses with the barest accomodations (for which most school buses would qualify) can be had new for that kind of price. You can still get a 2000 E-450 airport shuttle with a 7.3 powerstroke and a nice interior, especially compared to a school bus, for anywhere from $6k on up. Oddly, though, you can buy a used long bus with a Cummins for the same kind of money, and even at about the same age.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No it can't be good. One puff of something smelly surely will impact brain development! And THIS right here is why we have scientific studies - so we can do away with shitty opinions like this.
It could lead to a new definition of "rolling blackout".
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Predictable route, with range clearly defined, Times of use also known, recharges inbetween runs, topped up by mains at school/depot if needed. Electric/Solar buses seems like a brilliant idea
The local school district here in Minnesota has a small garage where they store their wheelchair-accessible buses, but the rest get to sit outside. That seems to be pretty much the norm. Each parking spot does have power though, to run the block heater that each bus is equipped with.
Include all you want - the decrease in the number of moving parts means savings, even if battery replacement is included. Couple in with that regenerative braking, which reduces the physical wear on the vehicle massively. Batteries are highly-recycleable, and the infrastructure for that has existed for years. But if you're not ready for the 21st century, I'm sure you can find a horse somewhere to console as you two stick your fingers/hooves into your ears to try to block out the sound of progress. In the future, people will laugh at you. Think about it.
I'm not sure what you're asking.
In my area (upstate New York), more than 50% of electricity is made by a combination of nuclear, hydroelectric, and "other renewable". (This last is almost negligible.) The remainder is natural gas and coal, favoring natural gas.
Of course, we are one of the cleanest-electricity regions of the country. But we're not the only cleaner-electricity region. For example, parts of Tennessee get most of their electricity from hydroelectric.
Useful links:
EPA eGrid
NYT article on the regional dependence of electric-vehicle cleanliness
Wasn't that the show on PBS where Ms. Frizzle jumps out of the bus a yells, "HAY YOU GUYS" ?
Replying to this to undo a moderation mistake. Great post!