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Electric Bus Sets Record With 1,101-Mile Trip On a Single Charge (engadget.com)
A startup called Proterra has set the world record for the furthest distance any electric vehicle has managed before recharging. The Catalyst E2 Max electric bus drove 1,101.2 miles on a single charge, beating the previous record-holder, a one-seat experimental car nicknamed "Boozer." Engadget reports: Not surprisingly, a bus can hold a much larger battery than just about any regular car. The Catalyst E2 Max carries 660kWh, or nearly nine times the capacity of a 75kWh Tesla Model S. Also, Proterra was driving in optimal conditions, with no passengers, no stops and a gentle test track. It'd be another story with a fully-laden bus wending its way through a city. Even so, that kind of range is very promising. In many cases, it could likely handle a long bus route for several hours -- it might only need to recharge at the end of a driver's shift. While it could take an hour or more to top up even with Proterra's fast charging system, bus drivers are no strangers to changing vehicles. The first E2 series buses are due to reach Los Angeles streets later in 2017, so it might not be long before you can witness this longevity first-hand. The company released a video of the record-setting feat on YouTube.
What a load of bullshit. This is like those shitty ARE WE FAST YET? "benchmarks" that show Firefox to be "fast", yet when you actually go to use Firefox it feels so laggy and slow and unpleasant to use.
This isn't an accomplishment to brag about.
so it has 9x the battery power as a tesla s and can only manage ~3x the distance :S
Yes it's not as interesting as having a benchmark of how it will perform in a real-world situation, but it is at least useful in comparing it against other vehicles assuming that they were also tested in a similar way as you can get an idea of relative performance gains.
They probably have done some more realistic simulations where they have weighted dummies loaded on the bus and make periodic starts and stops to simulating running an actual route. This test is done purely for marketing purposes though, as 1,101 miles sounds a lot more impressive and is going to get more people talking about it than if they did a more realistic simulation.
With good regenerative braking, adding passengers would not shorten the range too much.
since their ownership is less diverse.
Having battery-packs fully charged at at bus depot and then a system where they can be swapped out quickly for recharged one's.
Until personal cars will have such a system - forget it!
as to the need of fast charging when the design could allow for SWAP stations for the bus to drive onto and swap the batteries in a few mins tops.
the bus name is Maxist.
Also, Proterra was driving in optimal conditions, with no passengers, no stops and a gentle test track
Sherman Williams has decided to raise the ante. It is going to release a video of the 200 gallons of paint drying.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Tesla can quick swap.
you realize it's in binary
Tesla can quick swap.
Workshop pit with very specialized equipment, not doable across different car brands and on the road. ... people would be able to design and agree...
Buses could load from the side with a modified forklift and one type of battery pack if
"No passengers, no stops, on a gentle test track"
Notice how slowly the bus was moving in the video? Presumably to save on air resistance.
I wonder what the range will be at normal city speeds.
Electric buses are not particularly better than diesels on non-stop trips but have a great advantage in stop-and-go driving, so the summary is kind of odd how it plays those advantages up and down the other way around. I guess the point is that electrics are catching up on range now also.
With conventional busses, every stop to pick up or drop off passengers means more brake wear. Brakes are ablative and a big maintenance expense. Also, the bus is always idling and consuming fuel whether it is moving or not in stop-and-go traffic. In comparison, Electric buses use regenerative breaking and do not idle, advantages over diesels which increase with more frequent stops to pickup/drop off passengers and at intersections in the city. Neither of those special advantages come into play in one long, straight, uninterrupted drive; it's the comparison which shows the diesel bus at its relative best.
So busses are a special case which make electrics especially advantageous. In fact, projections are that for shuttle busses at airports, which drive short cyclical routes, even super capacitors would be practical; Because the route is a short cycle, even with a low charge capacity, the bus passes the charger before the capacitor depletes. Charging is almost instant and can occur when the vehicle is otherwise stopped at the terminal to drop off/pickup passengers, adding no additional delay. Also, the number of charger cycles of a super capacitor is much higher than a lithium battery.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
There was a nuclear bus in the 70's that did much better.
Still no tech jobs anywhere.
Fuck America.
but they just stuck a battery in the engine compartment ....
Sorry lads I got the example using a car the other way around.
If in need of some "weighted dummies" then stop in front of a Wal-Mart and offer free service to get people to participate in your test. Just be careful not to exceed the load capacity of the frame, which I imagine would be all too easy to do.
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I wonder what the real world is, because even half that should be enough for a city bus (500 miles = 20 hours at 25 mph). For a long haul bus, 12 @ 50 maye? = 600 miles (no idea the average greyhound speed, but 12 hours is a driver max shift I think).
for a long haul bus, a 1 hour stop (alleged charge time) every chunk of time less than 12 hours is reasonable too.
I have no idea how this transforms into real world, but it's very promising I think, people don't weigh that much compared to a bus.
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If you stand in front of one while it's moving slowly through traffic, your death will relieve you of your distress, while simultaneously being slow enough to be entertaining. win/win
Clutch
You can't take the sky from me
But is it any difference to the tricks the fossil car makers use to get their unrealistic non-real world MPG figures? Taping up gaps, removing seats, using thinner tyres etc
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
It's still good enough to make it viable. A bus will do a fraction of that in a day. A sample bus route is 20km long, takes 100 minutes, and has a 20 minute rest at the end. So that's 2 hours. In an 18 hour day, that's 360km. Even with passengers and stop-start it might do that on a single charge. If not, we can top up in those 20 minute breaks.
Honestly, this infatuation with buses has me a bit baffled.
Perhaps it's from people who live in cities with functioning bus systems. I do. The city in question is called "london". I don't know if you call 6.5 million journeys per day infatuation, but I call that "working".
Sure, they do a great job of moving lots of people from point A to point B, but everyone seems to forget to take the actual consumer participation factor out of account.
Well, the nominal population of London is 8.7 million, so the bus system averages a little under one journey per person per day. Which is pretty good.
anecdote about your city to match my anecdote
Perhaps your city sucks at public transport. Maybe you don't have a well integrated transport system. Maybe you have too few busses, or not enough priority given to them. Perhaps they're too expensive, too infrequent or too unreliable. However the fact that London has a working system is an existence proof that shows a working system is perfectly possible. London is not unique in this regard either.
The problem is not with busses, the problem is with your city. I for one welcome electric busses because they don't spew wretched diesel fumes all over the place.
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and make periodic starts and stops
Counter-intuitive to our traditional conditioning, this actually has either no effect or actually improves EV performance. Quite the opposite to a traditional ICE car which has the most efficiency driving long continuous stretches on a highway.
yeah that's a realistic test...
I wonder what the real world is, because even half that should be enough for a city bus (500 miles = 20 hours at 25 mph).
That depends on how efficient the regenerative breaking is. The big efficiency killer for busses is the frequency of stops. Going fast doesn't take much energy in a streamlined vehicle, but accelerating does.
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A [] dedicated lane constant 5mph trolley that is pre-timed for lights will kick the shit out of these useless artifacts. Someone please kill off buses. They suck and don't work.
The problems with trollys (and trains in general) is that they are under-utilized. Having dedicated lanes devoted to a certain type of vehicle is a waste of space.
I see the same issue with trains from city-to-city. You have tracks stretching hundreds of miles which, for the most part, have no on one them. Meantime, the highway is packed with cars. Each individual on the car may take up more per-capita space for their vehicle, but the trains aren't packed closely enough to compete in a total transportation-space-per-capita comparison.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
The power draw required to charge one bus let alone a fleet would be insane.
Put in a smaller battery and a turbine or fuel cell optimized to deliver the average power the vehicle uses.
Also, how safe are large batteries in accidents? Buses are usually full of people. Which is one reason why they're usually powered with Diesel fuel and not gasoline, LPG or CNG.
The fact is that this is a good benchmark, because any other competitor trying to do better would be able to game the metric if it were more complex or real-life. Another place could put stops in a "better place" to skew the metric. They could choose skinny passengers to reduce the load. They could change where the ups and downs are to change optimal driving. If it's flat, empty and never stops, the terrain, stops or passengers can't be gamed to fake being better.
Because there evidence is that it is a load of hooey that batteries will negate any CO2 efficiencies. Because if it isn't true, your wallotext is just blowing hot air.
Any wheeled vehicle, perhaps.
I seem to remember some airplane that flew right around the world powered solely by solar panels.
And don't get me started on trolley buses, trams and electric trains. I assume that what the summary really meant was self-contained, wheeled vehicles.
Most of the busses in Vancouver, Canada are electric trolleys (using overhead cables). I'm referring to the buses in the city of Vancouver itself; the suburban buses are diesel.
The frequent stops of buses at predetermined locations may be an opportunity to recharge the battery at these locations (half a minute of charging every five minutes amounts to 6 minutes of charging per hour), perhaps eliminating the need to make a long stop for a full charge.
Also, how safe are large batteries in accidents? Buses are usually full of people. Which is one reason why they're usually powered with Diesel fuel and not gasoline, LPG or CNG.
Buses are powered by diesel primary for economical reasons. Diesel engine is more efficient than petrol. And I think there are quite a few buses with LPG/CNG. I still remember riding petrol ones in my childhood and I remember those converted to LPG/CNG with set of gas cans on the top of bus.
When accident is so severe, that you can puncture hardened battery case, you will have substantial body count regardless of propulsion system used. Most of buses does not have even seatbelts and personal airbags are still feature to come. ;)
Having battery-packs fully charged at at bus depot and then a system where they can be swapped out quickly for recharged one's.
Battery swapping a fixed points on the route MAKES sense.
Specially since you also need to swap the bus driver.
Several jurisdictions, at least here around in Europe, severely limit how much a professional driver can drive in 1 single go and how much time he can total per day.
Means that the driver has mandatory breaks that he needs to take on a few set points on the road (e.g.: on the terminus, or at a big station in the middle like the central railway station) and that he also needs to be replaced behind the wheel.
All these are breaks that already happen today on a bus route and are perfect opportunity to swap the battery and/or top them up.
(it's already how it is implemented in places that have running electric buses for decades, like Zermatt in Switzerland).
And that's neglecting other current technology, like continuously charging the bus during service, like trolley bus.
One could imagine a "hybrid" type of electric bus, that connects to the trolley overhead wires to charge while on the "in-city" part of its route, and disconnects completely when reaching the country-side
That's already partially implemented, although at a much smaller scale, with current-day trolley able to disconnect and switch to an alternative power supply (small battery or small diesel generator) in order to circumvent construction works on their usual route.
Until personal cars will have such a system - forget it!
Although the technology DOES exist, it isn't much popular.
- in city, you charge the car over night and don't give a damn about swapping batteries.
- on a road trip, the driver will need rest (half an hour every 2 hours - strongly recommanded everywhere, and required in some professional contexts) much more frequently than the range ( > 300 km) achieved by current top-of-the-crop cars from several manufacturer
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It's not useful at all in fact is completely useless. All this demonstrates is that if you pack something full of more batteries you can get more life out of it. We've known this for decades.
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Thing is, no one actually used the Tesla battery swap system. There is just no demand. Charging is more than good enough already.
I spend less time "fuelling" my car now that I'm driving an EV than I did pumping petrol into my old ICE vehicle. At home plugging in takes about 10 seconds, in public it's about 30 seconds because I have to get the cable out of the boot and maybe another 30 seconds if I need to activate the charger with my phone.
I think the last time I actually had to wait for charging was a couple of years ago when I stopped for 15 minutes to get a top-up in my old 24kWh car. The new 30kWh one wouldn't have needed that.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Anyone got the non-retard-unit conversion? Why list miles and then also list kilowatt-hours? Surely you stick with miles and hoghead-days or convert to m/s and kW-h.
Drive it 1101 miles back again, two points...
> I for one welcome electric busses because they don't spew wretched diesel fumes all over the place.
As a city cyclist, I welcome the chance not to have black snot by the end of the day, and I'm sure my lungs will too. I'm going to miss that warm dog-breath exhaust against a leg while in queues, but hey, we got by without buggy whips.
You described MARTA perfectly.
Efficiency is not the queestion. It is likely far over 90%.
Regenerative breaking obviously only 'generates' energy when you break. It only improves range over a car/bus that brakes similar often but uses ordinary breaks only.
Bottom line a bus that never stops, goes farer than a bus with regenerative breaking that stops often. A no brainer. With regenerative breaking we can mitigate that 'loss' and probably reach 90% (or more) of the distance a bus would reach if it never braked.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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What is your quest?
What is the range and velocity of a laden electric bus?
I'm still waiting for "The Big Bus" to become a reality.
Big cities are much easier to have great bus / train system. For a mid size city which does not have sufficient density to justify the extra buses or trains that would make it more convenient. So unless they add a sizable gas tax, it is never going to be a decent way to get around.
Does it have air conditioning? What does that do to the mileage? Will the batteries boil in South Texas, Phoenix, and Las Vegas? Any problems here will cause those hand shaking, back slappers in the video to run with their tail between their legs.
Although the investigation ultimately found that GM broke anti-trust laws, the central conspiratorial charge—the provision of poor transit service in order to increase automobile sales—was not the basis of the investigation. In fact, most transit historians and other scholars generally disregard the conspiracy theory.
Almost every big city today has electric mass transit in the form of subways. Buses became popular because they aren't tied to fixed overhead wires.
Yes, but Jesus loves the internal combustion engine, and it is from Satan that electric vehicles arise. Remember the 11th Commandment; "Thou shalt have no other motive energy force than fossil fuels, so sayeth the Lord."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yeah, thing is electric buses are about air quality in our cities. Further in cities most buses actually do around 100 miles a day, so a 1100 mile range is enough for a whole day of driving and more. My guess is most of these buses will be delivered with a lower capacity battery pack.
Right because most mid sized cities in the UK all have functioning bus systems. That is assuming midsize is from say 300,000 plus.
They are also extremely expensive to implement in cities. For example recently Edinburgh put in a tram system, for the money spent you could replace every single bus in the city with an electric one. Way better use of money than a tram system that only goes between the centre of the city and the airport.
My test track is entirely downhill.
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I forgot turning up to 11. smite me down :)
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Most of the busses in Vancouver, Canada are electric trolleys (using overhead cables). I'm referring to the buses in the city of Vancouver itself; the suburban buses are diesel.
Making the suburban buses battery-electric and setting up routes that rotate them through the city center to recharge could be very effective.
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I know that's how they used to do it, my last two vehicles, Infiniti G37 and Ford Fusion Sport both get what the sticker says, usually slightly better unless I choose to drive like a jackass which is often. If you are driving normally though my experience has been that its pretty accurate these days.
I always had control in the past always driving a stick shift which may be why, my new car is the first automatic I've ever owned.
Early on my Dodge Neon with cold air intake at least got better than stated mileage as well although less than stated horsepower and torque. Those figures seem to be inflated more these days. Ford advertised horsepower and torque on the Fusion sport assuming 93 octane fuel which is rather hard to get. Around here its easy to get 91 but I also have access to 95,100,110.
The claim that this hunk of shit get's 1000 miles to a charger stank from the get go. By just looking the pages for Proterra website it reports that the FC-Series of bus has an 'nominal range' of only 49 miles to a charger. The larger E2 max series will max out at 350 miles. It's right there on the website, at this link.
https://www.proterra.com/products/catalyst-40ft/
So basically you just took a really basic EV only bus, stacked it with about 3 to 5 times as many batteries, and paid Forbes to produce this propaganda.
Honestly, if this product was worth a damn, you wouldn't have to get a business news paper to lie to the public about what this 100% fake product can do as a stepping stone to try to get people to buy more of these $700K dollar hunks of shit with a 50 mile range.
You're complaining about a report about the results of one stage of a testing process. As such, it is a baseline benchmark which is a necessary step in a process, not intended to be a test under the realistic conditions to be expected in actual conditions of use. IMO, you are making a big fuss about nothing, and are missing the whole point of benchmark testing. The real world will always produce different results than a single benchmark test.
PlaynBass
Is it the Party Bus to Hell? Why would you need a battery?
Low air resistance will, however, cut energy loss through air resistance.
How could wasting energy to stop and start the vehicle possibly improve performance over driving continuously?
Hammond wears a hat. James drives very slowly. And I drive the longest range electric bus..... in the world.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The Wright Flyer didn't carry any passengers either. What's your point?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
How could wasting energy...
And there is your incorrect assumption in the first 4 words. EVs recover most of their energy during stop start (short of emergency breaking). At that point all you're left with is a vehicle driving slower, closer to it's higher torque curve which on a variable speed system is often closer to peak motor efficiency, and at the speeds of the inner city far lower in terms of air resistance.
I mean EVs get max range driving perfectly steady at around 15mph. They don't lose much in stopping and starting, but they lose a lot as soon as they are out of stop-start situations as they are able to open up a bit more in the comfort of higher speed limits.
Cars on the other hand waste 100% of their energy when breaking, use energy running idle, have low torque at low RPMs causing starting from a stop to be very inefficient, and generally achieve peak mileage driving around 55mph.
Jesus loves the ICE because electric powered weed whackers mean dragging a long extension cord behind you. Sheesh!
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
American or Chinese electric bus?