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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.
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.
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.
Until personal cars will have such a system - forget it!
Why? A modern fast charger will give you close to a full charge in just double the average time it takes already to fill up at a gas station.
And you rarely if ever need a full charge to get to where you're going. If you're doing a road trip you may actually want to spend longer than 10min at the charger too. Your kids are probably screaming at you that they are hungry.