California Requires New City Buses To Be Electric by 2029 (nytimes.com)

California has became the first state to mandate a full shift to electric buses on public transit routes, flexing its muscle as the nation's leading environmental regulator and bringing battery-powered, heavy-duty vehicles a step closer to the mainstream. From a report: Starting in 2029, mass transit agencies in California will only be allowed to buy buses that are fully electric under a rule adopted by the state's powerful clean air agency. The agency, the California Air Resources Board, said it expected that municipal bus fleets would be fully electric by 2040. It estimated that the rule would cut emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases by 19 million metric tons from 2020 to 2050, the equivalent of taking four million cars off the road. Environmental groups said the new regulation was an important step in cutting tailpipe emissions, which are a major contributor to global warming and California's notorious smog.

Comments

Yea, but how you going to charge them?

[bobbied]

I recall that just a few months ago California also tossed out all fossil fueled power generation plants in a similar move. I'm just curious how they figure on charging these new buses so they can actually use them?

IF smog is your concern, do CNG powered buses. They run exceptionally clean and CNG generally doesn't require major changes to existing internal combustion engines to work.

IF you are really serious about CO2 emissions, then your problem isn't city buses, but population density. You need to get folks to live where they work and give up their cars, in mass numbers. This will require that you stop enabling the long commutes to the suburbs, heavily regulate cars and hike the price of motor fuels though the roof.

Problem is, most of these "solutions" are not very popular with the voters.... So we get this kind of stuff that sounds good but won't ever really work.

Literally impossible in San Francisco

[Anonymous Coward]

San Francisco, one of the most eco friendly places and Big Brothery cities in the country, canâ(TM)t do this. They have tried in the past but due to the cityâ(TM)s extremely steep and tall hills, the only safe way to get busses up and down them is to use diesel busses.

This isnâ(TM)t true for every route in the city nor for every hill, but there are specific hills that the MTA must run diesel busses on. The majority are electric, and the rest run on biodiesel, but there are many routes where it is not safe or possible to use electric.

Additionally, SF uses overhead cabling to provide power to these electric busses. Sometimes this cabling doesnâ(TM)t work, or is shut off for construction, or has been damaged from weather, etc., and the city has to switch to backup diesel busses. For example, my neighborhood had its overheads shut off for 18 months for worker safety while replacing the sewer lines. If you cut off the ability to fall back to diesel, the busses would just stop running because what other option is there?

This is why strict state-wide regulations in a place and large and diverse as California can be bad. You can end up screwing people in a place that already goes out of its way to be eco friendly.