Shenzhen Electrifies Entire Public Transit Bus Fleet | Hacker News Reader

Shenzhen Electrifies Entire Public Transit Bus Fleet

electrek.co

134 pointsElement_71 comments

Living in Shenzhen, it feels like probably 80% of the taxis are electric already. Due to government subsidy the blue electric BYD cabs are more spacious, cheaper (no 2元 fuel surcharge), newer and cleaner than the older red cabs, which are generally clunky dirty squashed VWs. However, the drivers pay more to buy them even with subsidy, and you need a conventional ICE vehicle to get out to the factories in Dongguan, or to cross the border to Hong Kong.

I wounder how it would effects the earning of those taxis drivers? Can switching to electric cab increase their income?

It will be really great too see their income (Not just financially) increased by switching to electric vehicles. Because that could give people stronger motive do to this kind of switch than government subsidy.

A taxis company in our city renewed their cabs recently, unfortunately they picked rather old cheap tech cabs that burning petrol + natural gas. If Shenzhen's taxis companies and drivers can receive benefits from such, everybody will eventually follow the trend.

Shenzhen taxi drivers are, to my mind, getting noticably worse at navigating. When questioned last month, one explained that the old drivers got out of the taxi game and purely drive didi (local version of Uber) as it makes more money. The current crop of drivers are mostly new to the game.

Shenzen / Hong Kong will be the next Silicon Valley.

Hong Kong maybe. The great firewall is really the party shooting itself in the foot.

The Chinese market is big enough to build very successful companies that never need to cross the firewall to provide their services.

Correct, you have a 1 Billion+ market for your goods & services. In addition, look at Tencent and Alibaba, I believe they are offering services outside of China just fine.

The Chinese market has to deal with obnoxious barriers to starting a business and competition from government backed giants (tencent, alibaba). So long as the party shoots itself in the foot it will never replicate Silicon Valley.

Second time mainland China business founder here - foreigner. As everywhere there are barriers. However, I would say that in China it is not that hard to get going all told. While foreigners cannot really sole trade and there remain linguistic and cultural barriers, low initial capital requirements, a non-litigious environment, relatively relaxed licensing and a reasonably transparent and predictable visa system are big pluses versus the US. These days, the VC environment is also solid.

Beijing and Shenzhen are already considered “SV” of China. HK? Far from it. The governement has very little push and clues to make HK a SV.

No. Hongkong now has no chance for that role, and compared with mainland companies there are not much successful Hongkong companies.

Hong Kong might have the education, but its market is too small to make any VCs interested.

It already is, but with a lot less bureaucracy. People get things done much quicker there

Yeah, it's easy to get things done fast when you can completely ignore the collective intellectual property rights and trademarks of whole countries, and steal designs and manufacture counterfeit goods wholesale!

it already is

Shenzhen is going whole hog with public transit seems they're opening a couple of subway lines every year at the moment

Why is the US not investing in these kinds of infrastructure build outs? I’m not trying to start a flame war, I’m generally curious.

I understand the path dependence that, for example, made the US adopt mobile phones much later than everybody else (a modern and high quality wire plant that wasn’t yet amortized). Things like that make things like train networks hard to build too.

But bus fleets turn over relatively quickly and incrementally as well. What’s the barrier? The announced deployments all seem like small beer.

China is moving unbelievably fast on electric vehicles. Their government is extremely motivated to stamp out air pollution, and there's nothing really stopping them. It's easy to spend lots of money on infrastructure when there is a rocket-ship economy and no political opposition.

The US is behind the rest of the world on vehicle electrification for a couple good reasons (very cheap gasoline and long distances between cities) and a few crappy ones (anti-science Republicans and large rent-seeking auto companies).

The U.S. legislative system has to cater to everyone's interests. Which is not bad per se, but when it comes to something like this, new environmental laws will always hollow out an entire industry. No matter what new enforcement they try to enact, there'll always be someone powerful lobbying against it.

>>The U.S. legislative system has to cater to everyone's interests.

I'd argue that clean air and water are in everyone's interest.

Maybe their actual bests interests but not what they THINK their best interests are.

Agree. Not limit to the energy policy. US politicians are more often doing serious but not quite visible damage to long term interests. Just most modern US citizen are not aware of. There are some exceptions like Taleb Nassim but the voices never go through main stream

All sorts of bitter griping in response. They are doing exactly what you suggest: https://www.afdc.energy.gov/data/10302

Graft, inertia, and incompetence.

Talk about all the buses you want. What I really really want to hear about is the chargers that make it possible. Give me maximum MW rates and rates for how much each station can crank out in total.

The article says, "The city has built 8,000 charge points at 510 bus charging stations in order to be able to charge roughly half the fleet at any given time"

I feel like the US will continue to fall behind the curve until it's one day too late to be looked at as what other countries aspire to.

Oh, wait. No one aspires to be us anymore.

Since transit buses are on fixed routes, I wonder why they didn't go with trolleybuses instead - no expensive batteries to replace (trolleybuses do have vestigial batteries, but they're much smaller and used for backup), thus better power-to-weight ratio, no need to wait for charging, and otherwise just as if not more environmentally friendly. When I was in Beijing, there were plenty of those.

(I know the ultimate source of power may be coal or oil, but it seems to me that even then, going directly from a power plant to the motor would be more efficient than an intermediate charging/discharging step.)

They are quickly phased out, even in Beijing. Most for flexibility I think. Beijing has several thousands of bus lines which pretty covers all major or semi major roads, some of them may use freeways also. Technically you can put overhead wires for all of them, however they may be also expensive and hard to maintain. SF's public transit system is like a toy compared to Beijing's. SF's is more like several double ended trees. BJ's is a real spider web.

By trolley bus do you mean what are also called “trackless trolleys” — busses with tires but no fuel storage that get power from an overhead line?

I’ve presumed that the infrastructure buildout and lack of flexibility make the TCO generally not worth it. In addition, if you need a mix you may get an economy of scale on one set of gear (maintenance, parts, flexibility etc — like a single-model-of-aircraft airline).

But this is speculation on my part

Two other reasons may be aesthetics, and the environment - Beijing gets sandstorms but it doesn't get typhoons. Per CLP (just across the border in Hong Kong):

> More than 30% of CLP’s transmission network consists of overhead lines. There are more than 700 400kV transmission towers that form the backbone of its supply system. Overhead lines are exposed and susceptible to the influence of weather and the external environment. If a pylon is destroyed by strong winds or collapses because of a landslip, it will take several months to be back in order.

https://www.clp.com.hk/en/about-clp-site/corporate-informati...

The low-speed maglevs being built in China seem a little more interesting.

https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/construction-low-speed-magl...

Getting people from point A to B faster on mass transit will get them out of cars and cabs.

The Changsha airport-train station maglev link is quite convenient, and ya, definitely saves a cab trip.

Don't believe anybody trying to sell you a Gadgetbahn

Denver bought a bunch of electric busses from BYD for service on the 16th street mall. My understanding is BYD offered a 12 year warranty on the batteries, in order to make the economics work.

I noticed RTD had new buses last time I was there. I recall that the original TransTeq EcoMark buses were very progressive for their time. If I remember the story correctly, RTD couldn't find a company that built the right bus for them, so they went off and more or less built their own. Then, over the next decade and a half, I began to see their distinctive low floors and warty roofs in cities and airports all over the nation.

I proud of my little city for leading the way, but I'm a little sad to see that TransTeq seems to have disappeared. For a while, it seemed like their ideas were taking over the world. But at least the technology advanced overall.

Anyway, my favorite part about the new BYD buses on the Mall is their noise. They have a speaker on the front that 'growls' so that the otherwise-quiet buses have a harder time sneaking up on pedestrians. New solutions to new problems!

Funny you should mention the noise. I took a tour of their charging facility, and the fleet manager noted the busses were originally too quiet. They went to the toy store, bought some toy trucks and rigged that growling solution from the truck noise makers.

Good use case, because damn is it easy. It's ~2 miles, inside a pedestrian corridor (one of the few in America, alas!). A modest size battery pack would go quite a ways when you barely hit 10 mph (16 kph), at least if there's a solid regenerative brake.

Stanford electric buses are BYD. It is right under the nose of Tesla :) (on the med school route the buses even pass right by the Tesla headquarters)

They accelerate quite nicely, so it's not so bad to be stuck behind one.

This is really impressive, I've been very skeptical of heavy payload capability and range for electric vehicles until now. Will be interesting to see how well they perform, how the charging infrastructure works and battery life

> very skeptical of heavy payload capability and range for electric vehicles

heavy usually means "not that fast" - so less of the speed-squared drug (at 25miles/hour i remember some guys did double the range, like 400miles+, on a Tesla S) and also the weight of the battery becomes less of a factor on the background of the whole vehicle and cargo weight.

Two things to note about heavy vehicles.

Often the power plant size is less than you would expect. Partly because drag is proportional to frontal area and goes up with the square of the vehicle size. While load is proportional to volume, goes up with the cube. That points to passenger cars being the worst case scenario, not trucks and buses.

Second, batteries are a tech that just scales lineally. Double the capacity of a battery pack? Double the weight, volume, and cost. Consider with a bus the metric isn't battery size per bus, it's battery size per passenger.

Add for electrified heavy equipment like tractors, etc. The extra weight of the battery is a bonus not a negative. You need weight to get traction not HP.

Buses don't need huge batteries for their size. A typical city bus goes only about 100 miles a day, they do a ton of regenerative breaking, and they can charge at stops and also they tend to sit in the terminal several times a day while the driver takes a break after each circuit.

Electric trash collection trucks are even better. That's because they do so much regenerative breaking.

Regenerative braking doesn't do much for someone who already throttles properly. Garbage trucks dont have to drive in traffic. They dont get free energy for regen breaking..its just a recoup for bad driving conditions.

Were I live buses do drive in traffic.

Yes, buses do. But not garbage trucks...Please read my post again - I never referred to buses, only garbage trucks.

Garbage trucks still need to make frequent stops compared to most vehicles. I suppose it's possible to make some kind of pickup system that doesn't require stopping, like the mail systems trains used to use. I don't know of any place that does that though. It'd probably get messy pretty easily.

Garbage trucks cruise at a certain pace. They hardly ever stop and go, for good reason: fuel efficiency, wear and tear, and just general work efficiency. The drivers jump on and off and back onto the truck. Have you ever watched a garbage truck squad in action?

Where I live, the trash collection trucks have a hydralic mechanism on the side that grabs a trash can, pulls it up, and dumps it over the top. And to to do that, it comes to a full stop.

The system you are describing sounds dangerous and uses far too much labor. Maybe your city has a trash collectors union with too much power.

I'm talking about NYC...it has been working well for the last 200 years with little in the way of change. I'd say the city knows exactly what it is doing...

Having the collectors use a robotic arm rather than just a fleshy garbage man for dumping the bin..that's only something you see in "new cities" that have no clue on how to do efficient garbage collection. Now..."YO!! get offa my steps you stoopidabass!! go backtoodah burbs ya yankee dandee sass platoon!!" ;-)

ICE garbage trucks brake all the time. They get up to speed, go a very short distance, and then put on the brakes so they can make their next pickup. There is no way they can let off the throttle and glide to a stop in time. Nothing is more stop-and-go than a garbage truck in a city.

They're turning up in Edinburgh too: https://lothianbuses.co.uk/news/article/Lothian-introduce-th...

I suspect a lot of bus services around the world with emissions targets are phasing them in right now.

Is the grid in Shenzhen mostly coal-powered?

Coal provided electricity to power electric powers ends up _still_ being cleaner than ICEs, which are just about the worst in efficiency or cleanliness as you can get.

Yes, but it depends on the coal and the emission controls on the plant using it. This is china we are talking about after all.

Low quality coal used directly for heating in the villages, for example, is very very dirty.

Coal releases lead, radon, and other toxic pollutants into the environment.

And you haven't supported the assertion that coal-powered EVs emit less CO2, and it contradicts what I've generally heard elsewhere.

Do the math instead of listening to people who resist change.

You are right about the extra stuff that comes with coal power, but you will find with a good modern coal plant, transmission losses, and battery/electric motor loss still puts less CO2 in the air that gasoline cars per mile travelled.

https://www.citylab.com/environment/2015/06/where-electric-v...

You have no idea if coal, gas, or nuclear is used. You just made a guess that they use more coal?

According to Wikipedia there are two gas fired plants in Shenzhen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_stations_i...

ICEs release all kinds of toxic gases and particulates too, only they do right where people breathe. Coal plants can be build farther away.

Very true. Although, historically speaking even in the US there have been coal power plants right in dense urban areas.

> "And you haven't supported the assertion that coal-powered EVs emit less CO2, and it contradicts what I've generally heard elsewhere."

https://www.autoblog.com/2011/10/14/how-gas-cars-use-more-el...

I'm guessing the units should've been 'KW' rather than 'KWh' but the general point is, you have to take into account the energy used to take the oil from the ground and transform it into petrol/diesel ready to be used in cars. In other words, all of the energy used in drilling, refining and transporting should count towards the total energy used.

As is customary in these discussions, the "Long Tailpipe" idea has been raised again.

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

http://www.casteyanqui.com/ev/longtailpipe/

Mr Musk's criticism of it is in here https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-j... Section starting "Power Plant Emissions aka “The Long Tailpipe”"

Chinese electricity might be dirty today, but if they're willing to transform the busses, what makes you think that the grid power will stay unchanged?

Solar energy is becoming cheaper every year, becoming competitive with coal even without taking emissions problems into account. And where are those solar panels manufactured again?

And if they stay with some coal generation, I found these on google very quickly:

http://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/china-cleans-up-its-act-5... https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/5/15/1563453...

On average 70% of China's power comes from coal. I can't find data with regard to Shenzhen or Guangdong (the province it's in) though.

I have to data for the electricity sources, but Shenzhen is right near a nuclear power plant

That will be Tesla's next big announcement

Musk seems to have different plans: http://fortune.com/2017/12/16/elon-musk-public-transport/

These guys better deliver on the promises already made, the list is getting longer every month And meanwhile in China...

Once they have the truck platform, won't it be easy to swap out the trailer for a passenger cabin?

I doubt it - buses typically have the driver in the same compartment as the passengers, and are much lower to the ground than the trailer.

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