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'Electric Buses Now Cheaper Than Their Diesel or CNG Counterpart, Could Dominate the Market Within 10 Years' (electrek.co)
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.
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.
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
No, but they have a bus-sized chassis to hang batteries under.
A lot gets said, and total carbon output has been studied a lot. For example, http://www.ucsusa.org/publicat....
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 the major commuter train station and their office towers. I'm inclined to believe that if the private sector transportation companies are buying them, then they're for real.
You must have checked a loooooong time ago.
Electric-car battery costs: Tesla $190 per kwh for pack, GM $145 for cells.
That's still $125,400 in batteries if we use Tesla's prices but it's nearly four times less than you thought.
#DeleteFacebook
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.
Singapore took the electricity generation into account when coming up with CO2 ratings for electric vehicles. Due to Singapore's reliance on natural gas for power generation, Teslas are now taxes as high polluting vehicles there. I can only imagine how much worse that rating would be somewhere that relies on coal generation.
Well it's cause of Obama's evil market regulations and war on fossil fuels. Now that Trump is in office, he'll correct that by putting tons of regulations on electric. Don't worry, he'll balance it out by removing two regulations from the fossil fuel industry for every one he puts on clean energy.
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 influence. Crony capitalism is better than the worst case scenario I suppose. Which is the redneck coalition simply destroying everything mainstream America has an interest in out of pure spite.
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.
Eat the rich.
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.
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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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.
entropy happens
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.
This AC is a flaming jerk, like most ACs are, but in this case he's not wrong on some points. The vast majority of people don't want to use public transportation. Aside from the various inconveniences of it, personal safety risks, personal health risks, etc, it's viewed as something that poor people use, and even poor people tend to want to maintain at least the appearance of not being poor. This is nothing new, either, humans have always been this way, and I see no reason that will ever change about humans, either; people want personal transportation. Has nothing to do with 'Americans' or any other nationality, has nothing to do with 'greed, avarice' or any of the other nonsense that this AC is spouting, it's just pure and simple human nature.
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.
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.
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.
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 engineering decisions?
Does the high usage of buses make the fuel cost difference more dominant in the equation, making up for the higher capital costs? Would that mean that electric vehicles will come to dominate the taxi market too (until the taxi market is overwhelmed by self-driving vehicles)?
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.
moox. for a new generation.
They are the most delicate of delicate snowflakes.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Somethings that are not considered in these comparisons is all the pollution put out on the journey from initial searching for oil, drilling test wells, drilling the well, extracting the oil, transporting it to refineries, coal fired power used to generate electricity to refine, transporting from refineries to gas stations and subsequent burning in the vehicle? I'm sure there are probably more steps of pollution emissions on the oil's journey from underground to the exhaust pipe of your vehicle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Hm, is it by any chance a Volkswagen or an Audi? Are you sure about those carbon numbers?
It's ok - after the brakes are broken, they regenerate. He DID said regenerative breaking!
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
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 rail system) to work.
Perhaps if you lived in an area that has infrastructure that is non-third world quality you'd have a different opinion. The TTC has many problems with it, but Toronto probably has better transportation options that 90% of American cities.
Joe sixpack doesn't give a damn about what makes his car move as long as it's cheap.
-- Cheers!
According to this 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.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
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 vehicle likely has a slightly smaller manufacturing footprint as it's lighter and lasts just as long, so efficient gas vehicles are probably better. Good source here
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.
-- Cheers!
Love some of the answers, but it is Compressed Natural Gas.
this is what you are talking about. https://cleantechnica.com/2017...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
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 the rain at as bus stop, waiting for a bus that is late, and then creeps through traffic, stopping every other block, and then finally arrives 30 minutes late so you can walk another 15 minutes to get to your office. Ten years from now people will look back on that and laugh.
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. 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 renewable energy, but electric transportation is important too.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
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/...
King County is also already a large customer for their hybrid diesel-electric buses.
https://www.newflyer.com/buses...
If they can work well here in our cold winters and hot summers they can probably work well in most places in North America.
I can't see that happening in cities where buses carry 100-ish passengers. can you imagine how long a queue of small self-driving vehicles to replace that one bus load would be snaking into a city and when one stops, the gridlock that would cause?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
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.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
If only someone could figure out how to transport electricity long distances.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
...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.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Getting into a city for work like london on time by car means going about 5:30am and having a large wallet for parking.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
This attitude will change when we see China clean its air by going nuclear.
City buses do a lot of start/stop traffic, which makes diesel engines run really bad, but would be perfect for electric with regenerative braking.
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.
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.
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 they come up with, a self driving car ride will be better then having a kid get on the bus, ride to the subway, then transfer to a second bus, and then walk a few blocks to their music class.
OTOH buses/rail is great for the large volume of rush-hour office-worker commuters all headed to and from downtown. It worked for me, and I use public transportation when going to places where parking is difficult to find. However, the self-driving car will also solve that problem.
I plan to name my self driving car Lassie so I can yell at it: "Go home! Go home Lassie!".
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"
[citation needed]
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
"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 to death who were raped.
There is plenty to criticize about Christianity, but currently it is far and away more benign than Islam and the two are in no way equivalent in terms of violence against non-believers. Islam needs it's own reformation, but sadly, it looks like the only way that will happen is when enough Muslims bent on violence are eliminated by force.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
"Switch everyone to electric cars overnight and there won't be enough grid capacity to handle the additional load." -you don't believe in realistic target do you. but i can make the unrealistic same claim to destroy yours.
"Give everyone solar panels and battery storage overnight and there will be enough grid capacity to handle the additional load."
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Actually you have it backward, modern civilization is modern because Christianity went through reformations. It is far easier to live in a manner that doesn't conform to any specific religion when the religious people that live in your town aren't actively trying to kill you and/or each other for it.
[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."
...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 advantage of instant power/torque. The acceleration curve flattens considerably above 45 mph, where ICE cars would still be accelerating well, but personally I don't feel the need for punchy acceleration at high speeds (your results may vary), and I can still get my Leaf going over 80mph, which is fast enough to get a speeding ticket most anywhere in the US. I'm not an EV zealot though... I acknowledge they aren't for everyone (yet) and are not perfect, but there are a lot of misconceptions about EVs, performance being one of them. Put it this way, Porshe isn't investing in EVs for their carbon footprint! ( http://www.businessinsider.com... )
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 batteries are often recycled for two reasons. First, lead is expensive, second it is REALLY bad to dispose of bad lead acid batteries directly into land fills. Sulfuric acid and lead are both bad bad bad for the environment. The process goes something like this.. Pulverize batteries into itty bitty pieces in a big hammer mill..... Separate metal from plastic by dumping battery chips into a tank of water, lead sinks, plastic floats while the acid dissolves into the water. Treat the water to neutralize the acid being careful to capture any vapors to make sure they are not toxic and of neutral PH. Scrape the plastic off the top of the water and dispose of it, scrape the bottom of the tank to recover lead chips which are then refined in the normal way. Oh, and eventually you will want to change the water in that tank, which will need to be properly treated to remove as much lead as you can...All your employees will need to wear full protective gear including respirators and heavy gloves because it's REALLY dangerous in your factory. Remember all that hazards waste you will be creating will need to go someplace safe and not just buried in your back yard...
Someday, you will also want to shut down that factory too.. Trust me, even knowing in advance, it's a horrible mess to clean up something like this...
It's a similar problem when building new batteries from the recycled lead.. It's a little cleaner, but it still produces toxic wastes, fumes and is a danger to your employees and the local environment...
Batteries are *really* messy sir.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.