But don't forget particulate emissions: I believe that's the primary motivation for electric bus conversion. Buses are a significant portion of particulates in many cities, and particulates kill people.
Honda used to sell a natural gas civic and you could buy a home fill station, in the late 2000s it probably made a lot sense. But now, you'd be better off getting an electric vehicle and a home charger.
I think LPG is interesting, but if you're going to deal with speciality fuel/fueling, you can just get a hydrogen or battery electric vehicle and enjoy the benefits of an electrified powertrain. LPG powertrains retain the complexity and service costs of gas powertrains with pretty marginal benefits. Electrification has its own costs but unique advantages.
Not universally true. In Italy, where regular gas prices are stellar, LPG is a relatively common thing. Not common enough, but the infrastructure is "there" (although not as capillary as regular gas) and it's advertised as a consumer option.
When oil became cheap again, the government stopped the subsidies and it was back to petrol. The tanks and the pumps at the services stations were ripped out and sold to the Indians, Eastern Europeans and the Chinese.
http://www.meca.org/regulation/us-epa-20072010-heavyduty-eng...
I think the situation is a little more complicated than that. Electricity is a much cheaper fuel than diesel, and maintenance costs are lower for electric vehicles too, so in the long term electric buses may end up saving more money than they cost.
Add to that the fact that interest rates are very low right now, and it may even turn out that financing the electric buses and charging systems could allow cities to save money from day one, though I haven't crunched any numbers so this is admittedly just speculation on my part.
I think there is a <citation needed> here. Do ICE drivetrains really constitute a large fraction of the maintenance costs on cars and buses? In my experience, suspension and steering, and auxiliaries, are the things that break.
Compare that with Brakes, Oil changes, Transmission service, DPF + DEF and the host of other things you get with a diesel engine + transmission.
We've got a diesel truck, diesel tractor and EV, it's pretty easy to see the maintenance differences between the three of them over the years(the tractor being the highest with the added complexity of a hydraulic system).
You can't do this with ICE, if you put diesel fumes in a compression chamber and pump the cylinders up and down, it doesn't turn back into diesel fuel, combustion isn't symmetric, so you need to actually have brakes.
The answer is probably easier: a Prius is 3300 lbs and a Dodge Ram is 6600 lbs and carries much, much more if working. Those truck brakes are going to be thrashed much harder.
It really does come down to the fact that you brake in the 5-10mph range on the EV(or not at all in stop/go traffic).
All that happens is you cut power to the motor but leave the wheels attached to the motor. This is the same as "engine braking" on a manual. The wheels turn the motor, which steals kinetic energy from the car and charges the battery.
There's no extra bits or anything. It's all in the drivetrain that's there already.
>more things that can go wrong. Eddy Current Brakes are a passive system with an extremely high safety track record. If you ignore the bearing that holds the wheel/motor in place there are no moving mechanical parts. I couldn't think of a safer way to stop moving objects.
Electric motors will need their bearings replacing eventually, but they have no transmission fluids, no circulating oil picking up combustion products, and regenerative braking removes a huge amount of wear on brake pads.
I have a plug-in hybrid (EV infrastructure isn't great where I live) and after 2500km the brakes still stick like new. They've barely been used.
We must move to electrification if we want to save our lungs and our planet. No amount of dirtiest diesel is going to save us.
Maybe[1], but still less so than the equivalent emissions from the dozen or so passenger vehicles that bus replaced.
The upthread point (which is correct) is that the environmental gains from bus transportation are concentrated in the efficiency gains of shared vehicles and that the relative impact of the fuel used is fairly minor. Get people on buses, then optimize. The linked article is worrying about things in the wrong order.
[1] I mean, no, not really. Diesel exhaust stinks, it's not particularly "toxic".
You might know your body well enough to be able to tell that it is not particularly toxic to you personally, but please consider the possibility others are more vulnerable it (because for example their bodies have more chronic inflammation than yours does).
The URL below goes to an article not about diesel exhaust or pollution, but about chronic inflammation, entitled "Understanding inflammation". Here is all the advice near the end of the article on how a reader might reduce inflammation. Emphasis mine.
>“Losing weight can have profound effects on lowering inflammation,” says Brown, who adds that eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables and low in fats, processed foods, and sugars is generally a good idea, though more study needs to be done to determine how it might affect inflammation. Exercising, which causes an acute inflammatory response in the short term, but an anti-inflammatory one when we regularly get moving, is another strong step to take, he adds. Other researchers advise getting plenty of sleep, lowering stress levels, and seeking out treatment for inflammation-inducing culprits, such as gum disease and high cholesterol levels. Avoid contact with heavy metals such as mercury, which is found in dangerous amounts in some large fish, and limit exposure to substances, such as diesel exhaust and cigarette smoke, that can set off the immune system.
https://www.johnshopkinshealthreview.com/issues/spring-summe...
My point was that, on balance, riding in a bike behind a diesel bus is less toxic than riding behind the train of 10+ cars it replaced (or really that riding in a city filled with single passenger vehicles is less healthy than one inhabited by diesel bus riders.
Get folks out of their cars. Then worry about what kind of buses they ride.
(In California, where I live, the vast majority of cars are gasoline / petrol cars.)
It's terrible stuff!
You can argue that it's benign in the middle of nowhere, where the concentration drops to nothing quickly. But not in the city!
NOx promotes low level ozone, which is an irritant, but I thought by far not the differentially harmful portion of diesel exhaust.
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-dioxide-co2-emissi...
https://blog.mybacharach.com/articles/sources-nox-emissions/
I know your feelings is as good as data but still.
Seems rather obvious
The 7 out of the top 10 CO2 emission sources in Europe are coal power plants. Their production is blown by the wind to populated areas. Some of coal power plant production ends up different countries as well.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/15/european...
EV buses allow you to wean off carbon power sources in many stages.
The long-term plan is to electrify both the buses and the cars, and also the trucks, and to do that in a reasonable amount of time, you need to work from now on at all of them at once.
What's your long-term plan?
And by the way, most of these cities already have a big diesel network. But let me ask again, what is your long-term plan?
Not for particulates. Even a clean diesel bus is going to be dirtier in particulates vs. gasoline. Its the nature of the fuel (i.e. not the thermo cycle used).
ON the other hand, converting to CNG eliminates particulates completely (you use the same engine, just feed it CH4)
This is true: more public transport should be the n.1 priority, even if it's diesel.
However you are creating a false dichotomy: electric VS diesel.
We can have more public transport and electric transport at the same time. Less cars, thanks.
Around here the buses run pretty empty. Sometimes they are literally empty. They take longer routes than cars, with each passenger going a longer distance because the bus route is not what they really want. It would be far better if the passengers had cars.
The bus just isn't going to take people point-to-point. It will go to a hub, and then people will change buses, and then another bus will go out. Point-to-point service is personal transportation. Shared transportation fundamentally can't be optimized to individual needs.
So the buses drive longer distances, and they have to drive even when empty.
BTW, bus usage can seem better than it really is. You are likely to go on the popular parts of the routes, so you see the buses being fuller than they usually are.
(It would not be better if all the passengers had cars, because then it would lead to greater congestion and it would take everyone 2 hours to go 10 miles.)