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Comment by schiffern | Hacker News Reader

>Fleet maintenance will help, but after 150k miles on average, they'll need to be replaced.

What most people don't appreciate is that fleet use completely changes the economically optimal strategy for car manufacturing.

If you're selling cars, the dominant strategy is planned obsolescence. The fewer miles the car lasts, the more frequently the car needs to be replaced and the more revenue you make.

If you're selling mobility, the dominant strategy is durability and reliability. The more lifetime miles you can deliver from each car that comes off the line, the more revenue you make.

Tesla's stated goal is a "million mile powertrain."[1] I think their leadership has already anticipated this shift in the economic calculus.

[1] http://www.hybridcars.com/tesla-sets-1-million-mile-drivetra...

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This is really hard for people to understand. Things like long term cost per seat mile etc.

If electrical really is that efficient and maintenance free and cost effective, albeit a heavy investment, they should be employed in buses and taxis first. And long after that, in consumer cars that sit in the parking lot modt of the time.

In average Vienna's trams are sold after 42.5 years and four million kilometers.

As a person from Vienna, I can vouch for this being reasonable numbers.

The oldest generation of electric trams is going to make their last turns soon. See here for more information: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Vienna

I wonder if there are any public numbers for maintenance of existing electric busses (e.g. San Francisco's trolley busses) vs traditional busses.

Wikipedia just has an unsourced "Electric motors typically last longer than internal combustion motors, and cause less secondary damage from vibration, so electric buses tend to be very long-lived as compared to motorbuses"

Proterra Catalyst Electric Bus Completes Reliability Test By King County Metro[0] (2016) shows estimated maintenance costs of $0.20/mile, compared to national averages of $0.90/mile for diesel, $1.10/mile for diesel hybrid, and 1.00/mile for CNG.

King County Metro Transit Hybrid Articulated Buses: Interim Evaluation Results[1] (2006) page #24 (PDF page 35/58) shows a table of several individual buses of different types, with mileage, parts cost, and labor hours, summed into cost-per-mile. Diesel had an average cost per mile of $0.48/mile. Hybrid buses kept at one bus base had a cost per mile of $0.47, while Hybrid buses stored at another base had a cost per mile of $0.46.

I'm unsure about the national averages - they seem to be twice the Seattle rate. And KC Metro's electric buses are estimated to have less than half of the maintenance costs of other buses. And the national average for hybrid is higher than diesel, while KC Metro's hybrid buses have slightly lower maintenance costs than their diesel. Unfortunately, I couldn't find numbers on KC Metro's electric trolleys or CNG buses.

By comparison, the 2016 IRS rate for Business Mileage is $0.54/mile. [2]

  Operator Type Average Maintenance Costs Per Mile ($)
  KC Metro Electric 0.20 (2016) (estimated) 
  National Diesel   0.90 (2016) 
  KC Metro Diesel   0.48 (2006) 
  National Hybrid   1.10 (2016) 
  KC Metro Hybrid   0.47 (2006) 
  National CNG      1.00 (2016) 
  IRS Mileage Rate  0.54 (2016) (car)

[0] http://www.afdc.energy.gov/pdfs/39742.pdf

[1] http://insideevs.com/proterra-catalyst-electric-bus-complete...

[2] http://currentmileagerate.com/

> electrical really is that efficient [...] albeit a heavy investment, they should be employed in buses and taxis first

Most cities, and whole countries!, already have this! And they had this for a long time. It is just mostly overlooked by "car people" because these are driving on rails or streets with rails, instead of plain steets.

Maybe it is also overlooked because it is named "train", "metro" or "tram" instead of "bus". But a tram is really just like bus: It drives a predefined route multiple time per hour (or per day, or per week). You just need better streets for it (namely: streets with rails). But that's, again, mostly a one-time investment. It means building the energy infrastructure directly into the street.

Rails do have some disadvantages, and not all countries have a good rails infrastructure, especially not within their cities.

But: The one huge advantage is the energy supply - no huge batteries and no charging times. This is why this technology is so old and has alredy worked perfectly decades ago, before modern battery technologies were developed.

In almost every city I've lived in, buses are much more "fine-grained" than trains. It's just too expensive to build rails to the same density as roads.

How about buses that run from overhead power lines?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus

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