World's first fully electric bus fleet quietens Chinese megacity | Hacker News Reader

World's first fully electric bus fleet quietens Chinese megacity

theguardian.com

113 pointspseudolus60 comments

Does anyone know what companies the electric buses are from? Albuquerque just had to return BYD electric buses because they could not perform as advertised: https://www.abqjournal.com/1246094/abq-rejecting-all-byd-art...

I'm wondering if the technology is mature enough to actually be practical for this, or if Shenzhen will end up having to do an early fleet replacement because they jumped the gun.

Chinese vendors:

   Anhui Ankai Automobile
   BYD
   Shenzhen Wuzhoulong Motors Group
   Zhengzhou Yutong
   Zhongtong Bus
   Zhuhai Guangtong Automobile

In Europe, there are buses by EBUSCO, Daimler, Solaris and a number of others. In US, mostly Proterra, Canadian New Flyer, and BYD

More here: https://evtrader.com/c/electric-bus-manufacturers/?fwp_locat...

The ones pictured in the article are BYD. I couldn't find any figures for the makeup of the fleet overall, but I imagine it's mostly BYD, as they seem to be by far the dominant player in the electric bus market, both in China and worldwide.

No data but last week when I was there, I pretty much only remember seeing BYD busses and electric fleet. BYD is headquartered in Shenzhen iirc

Don't forget the other note there - at the end of the year (end of this month) Shenzhen's taxi fleet will be required to be electric ... this hasn't been happening overnight, there have been electric cabs on the streets for a couple of years now, petrol powered cabs have been required to charge a 3 yuan 'petrol tax' so people prefer the blue electric ones

The city i live in Sofia, just got 20 electric busses [0], and are planning to bring 142 new LPG (propane) busses. This is a big deal! However, given that about half of the country's electricity is still from coal, not sure how "clean" those busses really are. (30-35% is from Nuclear power)

[0] https://sofia.bg/web/sofia-municipality/start/-/asset_publis...

In _all_ parts of the US, electric buses would cut emissions compared to diesel buses[1]. I suspect in Sofia, it would absolutely be a reduction in emissions.

[1] https://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/study_finds_electr...

Large coal plants are more efficient than internal combustion; electric drivetrains are more efficient than gasoline or diesel.

Slow, frequently stopped vehicles like buses derive the maximum benefit from electrification.

And their emissions improve automatically as the grid improves. You could easily schedule bus recharging to occur during maximum solar electricity generation times, as it falls between morning and evening peak times. Each bus in the fleet just needs one hour downtime in the middle of the day to recharge; that’s only a 25% downtime ratio across a 4 to 5 hour window of opportunity.

> Large coal plants are more efficient than internal combustion

Wish more people know about this.

There are still 2 basic sources of benefit. First, power stations generally use turbines which are much more efficient than internal combustion engines. Even after accounting for inefficiencies electric often comes out better. The other benefit is that it decouples the vehicle from the energy source.

Third, it moves the pollution out of the city center.

But minus points because transfering the energy and storing it in a battery loses some.

Still, China is probably completely content with getting the pollution out of the city.

That should be "China content with getting the pollution out of the tier 1 city". Those old diesel buses were probably moved to some tier 2 or 3 city to replace an even older fleet.

Isn't that exactly what they should do?

An internal combustion motor is radically less efficient than power lines when comparing input to input.

Transmission loses 1-2%, batteries lose maybe 5%. Compare that to 30% losses for an ICE, above generator losses.

30% is the efficiency of the energy in fuel being turned into work.

You need to consider the efficiency of the power generation, power lines, battery and then the electric motor. Any other comparison is misleading.

And gasoline has efficiency of exploring, pumping, refining and transferring it (tankers, pipelines, trucks to the gas station)

Correct that his is thermal efficiency, and I apologize for not breaking into out earlier.

An ICE is ~20% efficient.

A combined cycle gas turbine is ~60% efficient, transmission systems ~98%, LiIon ~99%, motors around 85-90%. The first is thermal, the rest are electrical. Well-to-wheel this is about 50%.

My point was just that you really do get a large efficiency improvement (50 - 20 = 30) by electrifying cars. Climate argument aside, energy is simply being wasted.

I don't see how hiding your pollution is helpful, in fact it may do the opposite as it allows people to delude themselves into thinking they are living a 'green' life. I already see this sentiment a lot, of people believing living in a city makes them 'greener' because they can't see the pollution their daily life creates everywhere else to supply them.

You can clean the emissions, using carbon capture etc, much easier in a power plant, even a coal one.

moving pollution far away means people don't have to breath dirty air which leads to all the obvious health problems which cost society

> The other benefit is that it decouples the vehicle from the energy source

until, you run out of the juice (electricity)

The potential for a gas powered bus to become "clean" is nonexistent. They will always run on 0% clean energy.

The potential for those electric buses is completely maximized. They likely run on greater than 0% clean energy now, and can potentially run on 100% clean energy in the future.

The difference could not be more stark or significant.

It's a lot easier to get natural gas to burn down to CO2 and water than it is to get diesel to do so. You might be conflating 'clean' ( = minimal harmful emissions) with 'renewable'?

Agree that electric is the way to go for both goals, though - EVs are as clean and as renewable as their power generation method.

Natural gas powered buses are already pretty clean, it’s the ones running diesel that are a problem. Though I guess NG has issues with green house emissions if not what in what we would call air pollution.

Another benefit: it is much easier for power plants to remove sulphur and nitrogen based pollutants and organic particles due to imcomplete combustion from emission. Those pollutants are much more harmful than CO2.

To play the devil's advocate: Shenzhen opened a metro/subway not before 2004 (being only the 8th city in China with a subway). And looking at the system map, it has as much stops as an average 500k inhabitants city in Germany. That's embarrassing for a city with a population of 12M.

Building subways is orders of magnitudes more expensive than running bus lines, even if they are electric. But it's an old standing answer to still thrilling problems of urban traffic...

The article talks about barriers electric bus expansion after 2020 when the federal government is scheduled to eliminate subsidies.

However, the buses are going to get cheaper because battery prices keep falling. In the not-too-distant future they will be as cheap as diesels. I think the government is eliminating subsidies because it thinks the expansion is going to continue anyway.

Then there is the problem of charging stations for taxis. But electric car sales in China are exploding, and more and more stations are being built in all the cities, so this is only a temporary problem.

The big thing Americans should be worrying about is that electric buses, autos and trucks are going to take over the world market starting around 2023-2025, and it is looking like China is going to dominate.

The stations are pretty important in China since many people in the bigger cities don’t have parking spots they control for their cars where they could charge overnight (many even have to park wild). This is less of an issue in the states for daily commuters.

On a side note, what happened to China's elevated megabus/trolley?

It was a silly concept that has been scrapped, IIRC.

Capitalism beat Communism in the 80's but it really seems Chinese 2.0 Communism is whipping its butt. I'm very jealous that they get to ride Maglev trains and I can't even get high-speed rail. :/ In the future it's going to be good to be Chinese, unless you like Democracy that is.

Oh yeah? There are no democratic countries with high speed rail? Hmm... I wonder where the Chinese stole their high speed rail designs from then...

Stole? The ones I’ve ridden on were made by Siemens.

You’re on HN right? As they say in the startup world, it’s all about execution. Sorry Facebook stole your idea, I’m sure they’ll make you ceo when you sue them in the courts

>Capitalism beat Communism in the 80's but it really seems Chinese 2.0 Communism is whipping its butt...

In fairness, "Chinese 2.0 Communism", is really just market capitalism.

...with lax safety standards and little consideration for property rights.

We could build the Melbourne - Sydney high speed rail line in 3 years if we didn’t care about a) the people who built it or b) the people whose houses were in the way.

The property rights one always bothers me; it seems to me that if you're right where a necessary transport link needs to be, you should of course be fairly compensated, but ultimately you shouldn't have any say/choice in the matter.

Ridiculous obstacles like this are, IMO, a major part of why the US is seemingly completely paralyzed when it comes to constructing any major transit projects.

The US government does have the power to seize private property for the public's benefit, it's called Eminent Domain [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain

One problem is that historically it somehow turned out that poorer, blacker people tended to be the ones in the way of big transportation projects. A lot of the backlash has roots in real abuses.

Property rights still exist but since it only became a concept about 80 years ago lots of property still belongs to the government and they can generally give you something worth more than your current property.

How many would benefit vs how many are inconvenienced? Seems like the beneficiaries easily outnumber the few who lose out.

Another benefit would be that people would pay much greater attention to local politics. You would need to make sure that the bus road goes through your neighbor's house, not your house. Whoever ignores the local democracy, loses their house; that is a powerful incentive for participation. What could possibly go wrong?

Easily said if you’re not one of the latter category, I suppose.

I am all for the compulsory purchase of property for very large infrastructure projects like this. Protection of worker safety is less negotiable.

Pertinent to this discussion, if you haven’t seen the wonderful Aussie film ‘The Castle’, you should.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpqT_l7QcBM

Why was this downvoted ? I thought it was common knowledge that the current China is communist only in name, but more capitalist than most western countries in practice?

Is it not?

Eh, pretty much Capitalism end game. I'd call it Corporativist Fascism as Mussolini blabbered about.

I do not know if centralized planning is capitalism. Beijing decides what need to be done, then they make that happen. It might look like capitalism from afar but it is not. For example, in true capitalism, companies that make money-losing decisions go out of business. In China, the central government does not go out of business and the government owned companies executing those ideas do not go out of business.

Having the losers go bankrupt and exit the playing field is an important part of capitalism.

In all fairness, this thing in China is more close to Italian Fascism from the '30s...

China isn't communist in anything but name, it's national socialist. They've basically copied Italy and Nazi Germany in terms of economic policy

It’s State Capitalism. We know it works when the state knows what to do and picks correctly, but when you reach the forefront, it becomes harder to know the path forward and individual businesses incentivized by profit can do a massively parallel search. So goes my thinking.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism

Anyone near Futian who can go take a look and provide first-hand feedback?

Check the first comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18586211

(China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks - 331 comments)

It’s not just the busses and taxis but lots of bikes are electric too. Most of Southeast Asia is full of loud mopeds but Shenzhen now has these small electric bikes which people make deliveries on (similar to other parts of Asia), except quieter.

Another fun fact is that the local government restricts electric bike ownership over a certain capacity to citizens. It’ll be hard to get one as a visitor. I’m not quite sure why.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com