Slashdot Mirror
To Really Cut Emissions, We Need Electric Buses, Not Just Electric Cars
An anonymous reader writes: All the EV attention these days is going to Tesla and other sedan manufacturers, but this article makes the case that it's far more important to switch our buses over to electric power than our cars. "Last year, according to the American Public Transportation Association, buses hauled 5.36 billion passengers. While usage has fallen in recent years, thanks in part to the growth of light rail and subway systems, buses still account for more rides each year than heavy rail, light rail, and commuter rail combined—and for about half of all public transit trips." This, while managing around 4-5 miles per gallon of gas, and public buses usually average about 50,000 miles per year. The electric buses themselves are significantly more expensive, but the difference is made up dramatically lower fuel costs. And there will be difficulties: "The range—up to 30 miles—limits Proterra buses to certain routes, so it's hard for an agency to go all in. Drivers have to be trained to brake and accelerate differently, and to maneuver into the docking stations. And Doran Barnes of Foothill Transit notes that some of the cost advantage of using electricity instead of diesel can dissipate. Electric cars can be charged at night, when power prices are low. But buses have no choice but to recharge in the middle of the day, when utilities often impose higher peak usage rates."
Diesel engines are powerful but they pollute A LOT. And don't forget ships. That bunker fuel many of them burn is NASTY.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
A bus will only get a few mpg, but carries a lot more people.
Sometimes it does. I see a lot of buses driving around 90+% empty.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I see a lot of cars driving around 80% empty. To and from work, I must admit that one of them is mine.
We should have been working hard at improving nuclear power, and solving its problems, to the point that this would, by now, be a no-brainer. So those polluting diesels are another thing we can blame on the environmentalists that shut down nuclear power research in the '70s.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
As one of the ACs mentioned, the wires are 'ugly'. The other problem is that running a wire power network that meets today's safety requirements is expensive, thus only good in areas toeing the line of where subways and such would be logical.
It's also a question of flexibility. Sure, the bus doesn't need to go down every road, but they more or less can, providing flexibility. If it'd cost a few million to install new lines to provide electricity to the buses, they're less likely to change/extend the routes.
With batteries becoming so much better, it's actually a good question as to whether they're cheaper today than the power lines.
I don't read AC A human right
Seriously? Do you really believe a bunch of hippies put the breaks on something as profitable as Nuclear power?
Coal and oil lobbies, the folks paid to store nuclear waste instead of processing it into new power. Look at those folks. Follow the money. When anything of importance happens it's always money.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It's also a question of flexibility. Sure, the bus doesn't need to go down every road, but they more or less can, providing flexibility
A electrically powered bus with overhead wires _and_ a battery could go down every road, more or less. There's still the problem of long haul trips. I'm still a little unclear on why the buses have to have a fixed battery capacity that has to charge in place as opposed to swappable, extendable batteries. Buses travel around on fixed routes with set schedules. Why can't there be multiple batteries for each bus, left charging at swap stations along the route. Make them automated. The driver can drive up, hop out, put a key into the swap station, position some forks onto the battery in the bus, push a button and have the used battery hauled out and a charged one slotted in. The whole thing shouldn't take more than five minutes. For long trips, why can't a bus haul a battery trailer with extra capacity?
Yes, but in a bus you can read a book. You better won't when driving a car.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
In Japan we have trams with both a pantograph and a battery pack the pack covers areas where they can't put up cables. Buses are doing the same with inductive charging at bus stops.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC