Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Electric buses were seen as a joke at an industry conference in Belgium seven years ago when the Chinese manufacturer BYD showed an early model. Suddenly, buses with battery-powered motors are a serious matter with the potential to revolutionize city transport -- and add to the forces reshaping the energy industry. With China leading the way, making the traditional smog-belching diesel behemoth run on electricity is starting to eat away at fossil fuel demand. The numbers are staggering. China had about 99 percent of the 385,000 electric buses on the roads worldwide in 2017, accounting for 17 percent of the country's entire fleet. Every five weeks, Chinese cities add 9,500 of the zero-emissions transporters -- the equivalent of London's entire working fleet, according Bloomberg New Energy Finance. All this is starting to make an observable reduction in fuel demand. And because they consume 30 times more fuel than average sized cars, their impact on energy use so far has become much greater than the than the passenger sedans produced companies from Tesla to Toyota. For every 1,000 battery-powered buses on the road, about 500 barrels a day of diesel fuel will be displaced from the market, according to BNEF calculations. This year, the volume of fuel buses take off the market may rise 37 percent to 279,000 barrels a day, about as much oil as Greece consumes, according to BNEF.
Those electric buses are not yet zero emission in China - where most of the electricity is generated by coal.
They can be zero emission, when solar- or hydro-powered.
Diesel buses will never be zero emission.
But after you have the electric bus, you must close the coal mine, turn off the gas pipeline, and shut down the thermal power plant. Otherwise you just moved the emissions around a little.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
Clean coal burning bus engines are the future. Bring back jobs to the Pennsylvania coal minors and make bussing great again.
Vancouver, BC has a fairly large electric bus system, and has had it for over 50 years. The trollybus system covers most arterial routes, and while the buses are primarily powered off the overhead wires, they can go for short distances (under 1km IIRC) on internal batteries. The latter capacity is primarily used to get around detours or accidents.
With one of these systems, your buses are as clean as your power supply, and you don't need to muck around with expensive/polluting batteries to the same degree.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
"Perfect" should not be the enemy of "good".
I've been spending a month or two a year in China for the last decade or so, and the air there is definitely a lot cleaner than it was in 2007.
As another poster already pointed out, it's heaps easier to put one scrubber on one smokestack than it is to put a million of them on a million automobiles. And it seems to be proving effective.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
...is to create a comprehensive network of electrically powered public transport infrastructure. Spain is already the country with the highest per capita number of high-speed rail Km's in the world, and most EU countries now have extensive electric rail networks. Diesel public transport, by comparison, is slow, heavy, unreliable, and expensive but even that's cheaper and cleaner than individuals driving themselves to work each day.
American-style suburbia, with its heavy reliance on individuals driving themselves to work, is one of the most inefficient and polluting urban planning models devised in recent history. It's also an obscene waste of people's time when they have to sit idling in traffic jams every day.
On the other hand, China is by far the most aggressive investor in renewable energy. India isn't dragging its feet either. The USA is getting left behind and falling even further behind with its current stable genius in the Whitehouse. Without a sensible, well-informed, coherent energy policy, guess who's heading for a 2nd world economy pretty soon?
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
It's just a reaction to the endless criticism whenever America does something virtuous. A thousand comments immediately point out that America's not perfect and doesn't deserve any praise while so many problems remain. Now it's China, but suddenly it's okay to applaud them despite China's horrible record. A double standard.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
yep.
Not to mention on individual vehicles you get yahoos removing emission reducing equipment (such as catalytic converter) for a slight improvement in performance or those fucks in diesel trucks wanting to 'roll coal' and leave a huge smokescreen behind them.
So the take home is don't convert a bus into a camper if you don't want to spend all your money on gas.
I must admit, while I was reading the headline I was quite sure it was clickbait materia. "Yeah right, no way in hell a few electric buses will hurt the oil industry" I told myself.
Well, look like I was wrong. I was very surprised to learn that China had 99% of the world electric bus but, when you think about it, it's not that surprising. They put the axe on many coal plants mega development because of the abysmal level of pollution in their cities so I can understand why they are the world leader on this. That "279 000 less barrel per day in the next year" is an impressive number.
Now, I wonder how it really "hurt" the oil industry. Does that 37% rise is to replace older gasoline type? How much is 279 000 compared to the world production? Probably less than 1% so I'm not sure "hurting" is appropriate. Maybe "make a dent on"?
Elok
Bloomberg posts this article today:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-24/trump-has-it-wrong-when-it-comes-to-oil-and-opec
So the industry isn't hurting at all, but even China's demand will grow this year. I guess you could say demand would be even higher without the buses, but they're certainly not causing problems.
Buses seem like a prime application, limited range, slow speed.
More gas for the rest of us :)
Given that world oil production is around 35 billion barrels a year, 279,000 barrels isn't even a blip on anyone's radar.
Long distance trucks switching to diesel-electric designs like the locomotives can halve their fuel consumption. All this with existing technology. No new breakthrough needed, just the mass production and economy of scales to kick in.
Then comes really new technology like the Tesla 18 wheeler truck. Then we are talking serious reduction in diesel demand.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Apparently I'm a yahoo.
Apparently I'm a yahoo.
If you couldn't find a high-flow cat, yeah, you're a yahoo.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Dude. Get some fucking help. No, really.
Most high flow cats (including mine) require MIL eliminators.
Huh, I wonder what kind of treatment caused people to react like that?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Most high flow cats (including mine) require MIL eliminators.
In the VAG/Bosch world, that could be programmed away. I don't know about your rustang. The only car I ever put a high-flow cat on only had one O2 sensor, a pre-OBD-II 240SX. That was CARB legal. Now I'm driving a pre-facelift D2 A8, which has the same exhaust they used on the S8 which tells me I don't need any more of it and it's definitely not limiting output. Post-facelift cars have cats and pre-cats. However, for all D2 A8s there are software fixes to patch away the downstream cats entirely so that you can run whatever you want, or nothing...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
MIL eliminators are the hardware equivalent of a software tune to remove the downstream cats and trick the computer.
And on your many visits to China, what did you think of the air quality there?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
There is little doubt that China has moved in a HUGE way to electric buses. And to be fair, it will hopefully make a difference down the road. BUT, the fact is, that China's Coal consumption and CO2 emissions went up last year. Why? Because China replaced burning diesel with burning coal. Keep in mind that China's AE was in use. Where did China get lots of new electricity? From coal.
However, China's reason for moving to electric has been to quit importing oil. These buses have made a difference. Way to go for CHina.
Now, with that said, the west needs to move to Electric buses. The reason is that other than Australia and Eastern Europe, the west has less than 40% on coal. For places like Sweden, Canada, UK, etc, it will make a noticeable difference in their CO2.
It will be interesting to see what happens when Tesla and other truck makers introduce semi-tractors. Over the next couple of years, transportation all around the globe, except for china, is going to see CO2 drop.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I actually encountered a truck rolling coal when I was in Georgia for a conference a while back. Apparently a pedestrian walking on a road rarely used by pedestrians was enough to to be deliberately hit with a blast. Frankly, not only is rolling coal gross and damaging to the environment as a whole, the deliberate blast settings should constitute assault.
LED lights so far don't seem particularly better than CFLs.
That depends on brand. If you buy the crap CREE ones that home depot sells, or the off-brand Chinese knockoffs, then yes, they burn out fast. If you pony up for the somewhat more expensive GE or Phillips, then they will last. I replaced over 30 lights with Phillips LED bulbs back in '07 and '08 and all of them are still lit today. The only ones I have ever had to replace were the Home Depot special buys, and the Ebay "deals" that I have purchased since that initial purchase.
If you want good quality lights, find your local lighting specialty store, and buy whatever brand they use in their showroom (They usually sell them as well).
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
The only value the U.S. dollar has is as the currency the U.S. allows as the sole currency for oil producers to sell their oil. They can thus print infinite amounts of U.S. dollars and the rest of the world has to buy them if they want to buy oil. Without this backstop, the U.S. dollar is worthless and you are bankrupt if you don't own gold or blockchain coin.
...that China seems to be taking the lead on new technology. All the more painful knowing that this capitalist country "sold the rope" (manufacturing technology and all that flows from that, though we Americans are very great at being "fast forgetters") that the Communist dictatorship is using to so cleverly hang us and elevate them. Sigh....
In Colorado at a "March For Our Lives" demonstration there were people rolling coal as a sort of counter-protest.
At least 2 drivers were cited under Colorado law. It's only a traffic citation though, not an assault charge.
Driver slapped with ticket after ‘rolling coal’ toward ‘March For Your Life’ protestors in Steamboat
2nd driver ticketed for “rolling coal” at protesters during Steamboat’s March for Our Lives
I've seen it a couple of times but more common are diesel pickups which are either modified or poorly maintained (why not both?) that just spew smoke whenever they accelerate.
Burning a flag -> hateful political speech
Burning a flag such that the burning embers purposely fall on someone and risk hurting them -> assault
.. where regenerative braking can put the energy back into the battery. They are also big, so have room for lots of cells. And most cities number their busses for the peak morning and evening rush, so there's plenty of opportunities to schedule each bus off the road for 2 hours to fully charge it.
But busses are only the start. All the problems with electric vehicles have been solved - we just need to ramp up battery production. All that remains to be seen is if the electric takover will be the major car manufacturers will writing off their investment in the internal combustion engine, or whether a raft of new automotive companies will take over.
So the rest of use aren't going to want gas much longer.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Some of us criticize both countries for their fuck ups and praise both countries when they make reasonable, but imperfect improvement. Others here criticize both regardless. Yet others will praise both without regard for their problems. Everyone in each of those groups is consistent, but if you cherry pick or pretend those are all comments from one person, you wrongly think they are all being inconsistent. And while there are some ignorant people who are actually inconsistent, that still doesn't mean any of the original three groups are using a double standard.
I notice you walked back your lie from here about those trucks reducing your CO2, 2-5% per year. Still without admitting you completely made up those numbers.
No one credible believes China had 5% emissions increase in 2017. You own link mentions this
He added that it was too early to be confident about the precise figure for China, which may range between 0.7 and 5.4% emissions growth.
Energy experts attributed the rise in China’s emissions to a revival of carbon intensive industries as the country’s economy grew faster than expected, but added they expected the growth to be “transient”.
The US is expected to see slower decline in its carbon emissions, from an annual 1.2% drop over the past 10 years to a decrease of 0.4% this year, with a return to growth in coal use, as president Donald Trump promised to rescue the coal industry.
We will be at peak oil due to Electric Vehicles ? News at 11.
Now, wait for electric cars, you'll see what happens in 3-4 Years to oil.
aaaaaaa
in a city driving scenario. All the stop and go wastes a lot of fuel in combustion engine vehicles, whereas electric vehicles can recover the
energy while breaking. So even if you use electrical energy from a coal or oil plant, you waste far less of it than a combustion engine. That
is especially true for buses, since they accelerate and decelerate more frequently during their trips.
and sometimes, you find cheapos that work really well. I bought a bunch of € 2,40 no-name bulbs at IKEA when i moved into my new place - and not one of them has given out yet (5 years). The only downside to LEDs for me is that they can disturb tracking in VR in certain conditions.
I found the IKEA bulbs to be suspiciously good; we use loads of them in rental properties. Haven't had a single one fail yet. Perhaps they are better than the retail price would suggest, with IKEA selling them at cost or even at a loss in order to put on a green face.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Why does the headline attempt to garner sympathy for a bunch of psychopaths hell-bent on destroying our habitat? Fuck the Oil Industry. Let them burn.
I want to say exactly what I said. Your points are just a consequence of what I said. Also, arrogance much?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
LED lights so far don't seem particularly better than CFLs. They certainly don't seem to be lasting longer.
Have they been around long enough to tell? I've rarely had a CFL fail after less than a decade of use. Most LEDs I've seen are rated to last 40 years, but have only been cheap enough to be a sensible choice for about 1-2 years.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Heat rises, moron.
No it doesn't. Hot fluid rises above colder fluid and we call this convection. The GP was talking about radiation, which is omnidirectional unless directed by a reflective material. If you're going to call other people a moron, it's generally a good idea to be right.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Early bird gets the worm or second mouse gets the cheese. Depends on situation whether being first or second better. Perhaps the West will get a chance to leap frog China refining their development learning curve like the Japanese, Korean and Chinese did in electronics and autos did at first then some became better (e.g. Toyota, Samsung). While fuel inexpensive and production optimized for petrol vehicles the West harder to justify the conversion while tech still relatively expensive. The West especially US should be careful to align with global supply chain progress or risk getting left behind, so waiting to long has itâ(TM)s downfalls too vs the bleeding edge early adoption premium. Anyway China should get the favorable recognition for their electric vehicles progress. It is positive for most even non Chinese.
I have a bus-stop in front of my house (traffic begins at 4:30 am) and since my city uses e-Buses from the beginning of this year, I can finally sleep without plugs.
Please explain how it's different than burning a flag? One's hateful political speech, the other is hateful political speech from bad people.
Ask someone with asthma.
Many people get to decide where to purchase their electricity, as you well know from your own situation.
So you are saying it's just blind luck that the US produces more CO2 than Europe? Governments and businesses are just so much different between the two? No, the people in Europe demand better, and so the governments and businesses deliver.
You think the business in China care about being green? You think the government does? Both only do it because the people demand it. And they don't even get a vote or choice!
What car do you drive? And who forced you to buy that car? Government mandate, or did some business force you to buy it? What about people who walk/cycle/bus/train/work from home? Did the big bad government choose for them?
Even if you by a car, you still get to choose which one.
You decided to buy solar.
You decided to get an EV.
You decide what to buy, what to eat, what to do for entertainment, how many kids to have, where to live, where to take them for holidays, who you vote for, where you spend your money, what setting to put your thermostat on.
You are so special and choose, but the rest of America doesn't? They don't choose big gas guzzling cars and live in suburbs far away from their workplaces? They don't choose to heat and cool some of the biggest houses in the world? If the government forced you, why didn't it force all the others? Why are the governments and businesses so much more powerful in Europe to make their CO2 so much less than yours?
hehe. The cheap bulbs that I bought from Lowes are the only ones that have lasted for me. The GE bulbs i bought all quit within a year. My experience with Cree and Philips bulbs has been similar to yours.
The lighting showroom is a darn good idea, and I think I'll swing by soon. I still have a few CFLs that will probably stop working any day now.
China would be happy to buy oil from Venezuela, and Venezuela would be happy to sell it to them, even if Trump (further) blows up the Middle East.
So China is still making a concerted effort to move to renewables, and the U.S. is still falling behind.
The guy with the double standard is you.
How and when exactly did the US start make environmental protection laws? Laws against air polution?
Why is China not allowed to make the same mistakes/experiences/development the rest of the now industrialized world did?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Because we didn't know any better? There was no science proving pollution was as bad as it was. We didn't even have an EPA until relatively recently. Moreover the "but Jimmy's mom lets him do it" argument is a stupid one that was debunked by your mom back when you were a kid.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
LED lights so far don't seem particularly better than CFLs. They certainly don't seem to be lasting longer.
Huh. That's not my experience at all. I started switching to LEDs about a decade ago. Before that it was a mix of incandescent and CFL. Now, the only non-LED lights in my house are the colored CFLs in my den (CFL is fantastic for mood lighting of that sort) and a few incandescents for which I haven't found LED replacements. I haven't replaced a single LED bulb yet. Anecdotal, I know, but it jibes with the research and ratings.
And they don't know any better either.
They have *old* reports from America, from 1970 that some law was made.
And like climate deniers they think: "it is exaggerated. How can so few people wich are all so poor have such an impact on climate/fresh air/environment"
So, what actually are you accusing China (or other countries about)? That they made the same "mistakes" America did?
Moreover the "but Jimmy's mom lets him do it" argument is a stupid one that was debunked by your mom back when you were a kid.
I never made such an argument to my mom. And no real idea how it relates to the topic.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
A valiant attempt but still identifiably not the real deal.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
What they were talking about involved a heat sink on an LED. Wanna know why we put the heat sink above the LEDs in almost every design, screw-in bulbs excepted? Give you a hint - heat rising through the LED would destroy it.
Please know what exactly is being talked about. Radiation was not it. They were talking about controlling the heat that destroys LEDs.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
MIL eliminators are the hardware equivalent of a software tune to remove the downstream cats and trick the computer.
Not even close. They just lie about sensor output, meaning the PCM can't correctly read O2 levels. The end result is running rich and/or lean and damaging engine and/or catalyst. Actually tuning for the different cats is wholly and completely different.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
China knew damn well what they were doing and did it anyway. They polluted the fuck out of the environment with smokestack industries that could have been done differently and cleanly. But they just didn't care. They wanted power and wealth, now. The Communist government had all the patience of a three-year-old staring at a marshmallow on a plate.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
China 399,000(exports) 4,210,000(imports)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
They polluted the fuck out of the environment with smokestack industries that could have been done differently and cleanly. ...
And how exactly could/should they have done it?
You seem to be unaware that they did not have the technology to manage their growth without the pollution.
Just like 1950 - 1970 USA, you could write the same sentence about that time and that country
The Communist government had all the patience of a three-year-old staring at a marshmallow on a plate.
They catapulted a 1600th economy/society into a 1999 economy/society during the the years from 1950 till 2017.
What progress did you country make in relation to that since 1955?
I find a 400 years catch up over a period of 70 years ... that is just 2 or 3 generations, quite impressive. Don't you?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
When you drive a vehicle that means that you never again visit a gas station, you'll realize why fuel vehicles are as dead as the dinosaurs that power them. For that daily convenience, you'll happily rearrange your occasional long trip to include one or two 30-minute rest stops while it recharges.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
The bit auto manufacturers are still hanging on the the internal combustion engine, still fighting the electric revolution. That's why the big auto companies are only selling tiny, low range buzboxes. Their moto is still, 'Electric cars aren't real cars. You need a real car.'
The car you want can be built now. But because only smaller companies, like Tesla, are building real electric cars, the prices are high. That will change, either when large auto gives in and writes off all their engine building factories as the scrap that they are, or when Tesla and other new auto companies take over the market.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp