US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel
canarymedia.com
canarymedia.com
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC121970/
Even if an electric fleet is the same cost, changing over would save tons of money and alleviate tons of suffering. It's the right thing to do for any ethical reason you can consider.
Unless, I suppose, you're intent on making the poor suffer. Diesel buses are very cost-effective at accomplishing that.
It may be more complex: electricity generation is very dirty in some regions, such as where coal is burned.
Is it more dirty than diesel emissions? I have no idea, but old diesels were nasty.
Diesel emissions requirements for commercial vehicles are much more lenient for this reason.
Also, those coal plants aren't parked outside primary schools idling, and schoolkids aren't spending hours sitting around their smokestacks.
Don't get me wrong: Coal is dirty as sin and radioactive as hell. Coal delenda est.
Spoiler: Well-to-wheels, BEV cars are better than the best gas cars (top end prius) even if the source electricity is 100% coal.
The best is still not driving, but it's a step in the right direction.
How exactly? Do you have any examples? Also, have you ever seen the price of car infrastructure? I would be willing to bet that denser walkable urban infrastructure projects are waaaaay cheaper than building and maintaining sprawling road, sewage, and power transmission networks. Sprawl is seriously draining the finances of many small cities and towns in the US. There's a whole book about it: https://www.google.com/search?q=strong+towns
You could also just watch this smug video https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0
But, when it comes to schools, fewer buildings means lower costs. We've been suffering this for years, there aren't anywhere near as many schools in my district as there were 30 or 40 years ago, even as the number of students go up. It's less expensive to consolidate the schools into a fewer number of locations and increase the capacity of the remaining locations.
Ergo, going the other direction and creating more, smaller schools (each with their own infrastructure, custodians, some level of administration, etc) is going to require taxpayers to foot the bill. And not like a levy that only lasts for X years, but on an ongoing basis. Where I live (Oregon) there is massive resistance to new taxes. I do not think we are unique in that regard.
That means electric companies are losing money running coal plants.
They are racing to replace them with wind and solar and natural gas turbine, with the gas turbine slater for replacement with storage once that is cheap enough.
Finally, with EVs and the electric grid, the power can be phased out centrally. Even if coal is used RIGHT NOW, once new power generation is available it is a seamless switchover for EVs.
If in the long term some dirt cheap thorium reactor supplants solar and wind, EVs don't care where the electrons come from.
Plus home solar, EVs doubling as home energy backup/storage, less components in the EV require less manufacturing, safer skateboard design, more internal space, lower center of gravity, regen breaking.
Although the ideal transition is a 100 mile LFP PHEV for the next ten years. No range anxiety, 90% + of daily and weekend driving is all electric, maximizes use of current manufacturing capacity of batteries, regen breaking efficiency.
Ten years ago (,ten years after the first Prius) we should have required all consumer passenger vehicles to be PHEV in a phased in manner.
It's still not too late to do that.
The sources he uses for breakeven time (DOE) assumes 24.3 mpg [1] for the average regular car, but people don't drive average cars they drive specific cars.
If you take the DOE assumptions and approach this from the other end, CO2 pollution by mpg, then you find an ICE car getting approx 30 mpg or more is less polluting per mile driven than an EV powered entirely by coal, and one getting >45 mpg is less polluting than an EV powered by natural gas. This does not include the battery at all, which makes sense as it is an independent consideration.
This is a more honest way to present the information so individuals can make informed decisions for themselves among potential car purchases and so that people aren't fooled into thinking that all EVs are less polluting in all circumstances.
1 - https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions_sources....
Coal is rapidly been retired as a source of electricity generation - 85% of generation capacity being retired in 2022 will be coal[1] - and there hasn't been a new large coal plant built in the US for over a decade[2]. In Europe the amount of electricity being generated by coal is half of what it was at its peak.
Meanwhile, renewables now make up about a 87% share of new electricity generation capacity in the the US[3]. Europe is similar.
Pricing the CO2 emissions cost of an EV using the dirtiest and fastest declining electricity source (coal) does not seem fair or honest to me.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50838
[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-the-u-s-ever...
[3] https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/solar/renewables-are-87...
Your analysis would result in the conclusion that charging an EV in France (90% carbon free electricity) causes the same amount of CO2 emissions as using one in South Africa (90% fossil fuel electricity).
The expansion of EVs has coincided with a massive drop in coal electricity share and a massive increase in solar PV and wind share, globally. Assuming that expanding EVs are being powered by coal is odd to say the least. Especially given that (at least where I live) 70%+ of EV charging is done at home, mostly using off-peak electricity, which tends to have a much higher renewable share.
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/classic/fuels/lcf...
If you only charge from noon to two in Q1, then use have zero marginal emissions per mile driven (this is the best case). If you only charge from 7-8pm you emit 142.06 gCO2e/MJ.
1 megajoule = 0.2777777778 kilowatt-hour
Converting gives us ~512 g CO2e per kWh.
Car efficiency is measured in miles per kWh. 4 miles per kWh is doable (some cars are better, some worse). So, that's 128g CO2e per mile.
50 miles per gallon would be great. A gallon of gas emits 20 lbs CO2, or 0.4lbs per mile, which is 181 grams per mile.
So, if you only charge at the worst possible time in California (basically forcing PG&E to use natural gas plants to charge your car), then a 50 mpg car is still 50% worse than a slightly larger EV.
In practice, you charge during off peak hours. At night, emissions are about half worst case. During the day, they're 10% of worst case.
I feel like there are many people who see 30 coal / 45 nat gas and take offense that it doesn't make EVs sound particularly good. This is why I called it a more honest presentation because EVs in terms of CO2 are fairly bad in WV and marginal in DE or MI or many other places compared to a high-mpg regular car. Instead of taking offense and setting out to correct the record, understand that not sounding particularly good is an accurate view.
Even in CA, the mpg needed to be cleaner than EV formulation makes it clear that driving a 100 mpg hybrid for instance is so good that any further gains are of little consequence.
When comparing old diesels to old coal power plants the power plants win by being more efficient but both belch out a lot of pollution. They also have the advantage of burning coal, a fuel which is available in abundance and does not need as much processing as crude oil does to be used in diesel engines.
When comparing old diesels to modern coal power plants this is true at an even higher level since those modern power plants filter out fly ash and are more efficient.
When comparing modern diesels to old coal-fired power plants the diesels win by being less polluting and possibly on terms of efficiency.
Modern diesels versus modern coal power plants goes to the power plants again since these win on terms of efficiency - especially when using combined heat & power - over the diesels.
This is also when residents have asthma symptoms too. To be fair they are more likely to be home.
So it is not cut and dry but if possible I would love to get rid of vehicle emissions as some particulate is too fine to measure.
ICE cars will always give off pollution.
So if a district can outsource part of that maintenance cost, and electric buses prove to be lower maintenance and more reliable that their diesel counterparts, there are significant savings to be had for the school districts.
In comparison to what? Diesel engines in commercial vehicles are extremely reliable. It certainly could be possible for an electric bus to be more reliable, they certainly have less points of mechanical wear. However, there are a lot of power electronics going into charging their batteries and delivering the battery power to the motors.
Plus they smelled like death and produced gross amounts of black smoke.
US Detroit diesels? lol no.
It is true that a lot of parts are in common. But there are a lot of moving parts, susceptible to failure in an ICE not in electric.
I spent a lot of money recently fixing an oil leak and replacing the cam belt on my ICE. Routine maintenance (the leak specifically was not routine but leaks generally are).
My next car will be electric, I hope.
For all our family cars over last 30 years, 90% of repair cost was engine. Those oarts are under temperature, pressure and massive friction.
Windshield was cracked.
Something in the TPMS was messed up.
Brake fluid change (another thing that few people do but should be done)
I didn't pay to fix the blind spot warning system, I want to but the repair costs is more than the car is worth.
The only very selective myth I still hear repeated is that diesel engines are more durable now than they were, which isn’t saying much, and skirts around just how much else can and regularly does go wrong with a diesel-powered vehicle.
Flywheel clutches are an expensive nightmare, and the vibration destroys manifolds, cams and exhausts in short order.
That’s only for the dirtiest diesels that aren’t properly using DPFs or AdBlue (which if you’re seriously considering running school buses in 2022 and not using these, you’re a disgrace). Both of these fail regularly and cost a small fortune to replace.
There’s an entire underground industry dedicated to removing the particulate filters from Diesels to improve fuel economy and reliability (because I guess some people just hate kids, who knows?).
Electric vehicles have been around for well over a decade now, the data is back on them, and on the whole they are astonishingly reliable compared to the ICE vehicles they are replacing. There’s a lot of cables, sure, but they’re flexible and aren’t inherently moving parts.
The old ones "run on physics"
Even with that said (and as detailed above) there are so many other parts to a modern Diesel-powered vehicle that can and regularly do go wrong that they get a pass for because it's not in the engine block. I do wonder if this is because people just assume the vehicles are otherwise identical beyond the engine.
I distinctly remember being one of those kids that would have to be picked up in another bus every once in awhile. This was before cell phones, so the bus driver had to walk to the nearest house (this was out in the country) and ask to use the phone. I think we had a problem bus for a few months where this happened fairly regularly until they swapped it out for a different one.
One time a passing vehicle kicked up a rock that took out the windshield. Nobody was seriously injured, but there was a fair bit of broken glass.
One of the most wasteful (and expensive) things about school busses is that they are only used for school, which means they sit idle for much of the day. My father tried to work with at least one city to combine city busses with school busses - but state law (Indiana) forbid this since school busses were required by law to be the classic yellow with black markings.
I'll also add that outsourcing isn't without challenges, and the employees are often worse off. (I don't remember as many specifics right now: My father, who died 9 or 10 years ago, generally worked with custodial and cafeteria outsourcing.)
(In the following post I use "you" rhetorically, not talking about Broken_Hippo directly.)
Yeah. The body rental place makes it look like the killerest deal imaginable, like you get all the benefits of having human workers, minus actually having to deal with any human problems. No unions or strikes, if the body rental you're using gets organized it dies without the collateral damage to the renter, you just switch outsourcing unit. And there's tons of other human problems, and those human problems require other humans's help. They ought to get real, people are expensive, life is expensive, if something is more expensive than life we replace it with life.
There is this deal you can get where you pay about half market wages, almost exactly half, and there's no unionization or anything. Just have to worry about emigration. Called slavery, these days people focus on the whipping and the coercion, they forget if you're a slave your master will be disgustingly cheap with the things you need he must provide for you, because he knows it's literally painful to ask.
If you want something cheap and rather your money ends up spent on electricity than food, like who cares a joule's a joule, go, go and fire 100% of your workers and replace them all with machines. Sure to make a lot of money!
What will you spend it on, alternating current or direct current? What voltage are you compatible with?
In my country's capital there is a plan of using a fleet of school mini-buses (as "taking kids to school" is among the top reasons why people say they still use a car for their daily commute), but also of putting these to work outside the narrow band of school start/end in other uses: taking old people to their doctors appointments, and commercial on-demand uberpool type transport.
This is one of the biggest issues with US' private healthcare system.
The U.S. government just doesn't feel that direct "cost" in the same way countries that have to pay to fix the health of their citizens do. This is why you see a lot of other countries put higher taxes on sugar, gasoline, diesel, etc. Because they see a direct correlation between the consumption of those things and them having to invest more in their national healthcare system out of their tax money.
Meanwhile, in the US, since it's the citizens that pay out of pocket, that money still goes into the economy, so it's kind of all the same to the government whether or not they get sick or not. They may notice some correlation in the long-term, but the negative effects of these things are not nearly as urgent to the government.
Was honestly surprised when I saw that the rate of university graduation in the US is twice as high as it is here in Germany.
By contrast here in Finland education is free, so it's a lot easier for people to start courses, and if it didn't suit then drop out. Or move cities, and get a job.
Where education is free I'd expect both more people to sign up to it, but also more people to drop out. Or take 10+ years to eventually get their degree whilst continuing to work.
1. Everyone gets sick and dies. Dying a bit earlier from diesel probably doesn't cost more than whatever you would have died from later.
2. These other countries also have government funded pension system. If people live longer that's an added expense! If you do the cynical math, government finances are best if people die of something cheap soon after they retire.
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/237043/us-health-care-sp...
This is of course changing now. (2)
As noted in the second link, a factor is the "Volkswagen emissions scandal", AKA "Dieselgate" (3)
1) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41985715
2) https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/consumer-news/98747/d...
3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56571
> Federal Subsidies. In CBO and JCT’s projections, net federal subsidies (that is, the cost of all the subsidies minus the taxes and penalties) in 2021 for insured people are $920 billion, or 4.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
The US federal government (that is, excluding state and county governments, which also spend money on this) spends 920 billion dollars a year on health insurance and care. This also excludes the VA system (~200 billion), which does cover dependents. So that's 1.1 trillion per year by the federal government alone. To take California for an example, you can add another 100 billion in state spending on Medi-Cal. It's also not uncommon for counties and cities to operate and run their own hospital systems.
Then, the state government claimed this reduced carbon emissions, ignoring the externalities associated with doubling most parents' commutes for 18+ years.
LFP seems like the obvious choice for large vehicles like buses unless there's some reason to really need to optimize for range. In schoolbuses especially, it would be good to use a kind of battery that's much less likely to catch on fire.
Now... getting kids to actually use them is a different matter.
The bus is generally the largest vehicle on the road, and an impact from a car (or even pickup truck/suv) is unlikely to significantly move the bus. Plus - the sit very high, and impacts tend to drive the other vehicle down - rather than moving the body of the bus.
The only situation they really are useful is when the bus rolls, and for buses that aren't driving highway speeds (which is most of them), they almost never roll (the only exception is essentially driver error - where the bus leaves the road on slope)
Large school buses are heavier and distribute crash forces differently than passenger cars and light trucks do. Because of these differences, bus passengers experience much less crash force than those in passenger cars, light trucks, and vans.
NHTSA decided the best way to provide crash protection to passengers of large school buses is through a concept called “compartmentalization.” This requires that the interior of large buses protect children without them needing to buckle up. Through compartmentalization, children are protected from crashes by strong, closely-spaced seats that have energy-absorbing seat backs.
Statistics bear this out, taking a school bus to school is about 70 times more likely to deliver a student safely. In this context, 70 is huge.
They slide sideways out of the seats trough any serious horizontal forces, in the case of a rollover their heads will violently hit the roof as they literally take off from the seats [0], and then fall on the people on the ground side.
I understand that getting a horde of kids to put on seatbelts is a compliance nightmare, but imho it's difficult to argue how that wouldn't make a massive difference in a crash scenario, particularly during roll-over incidents [1]
[0] https://youtu.be/ksw67zFnuAE
[1] https://youtu.be/l4uHbX0SL_w (NSFW)
I can't remember ever seeing pictures of a city bus (as opposed to a long distance bus) overturned in an accident in Europe. City bus-type vehicles are used for public bus service and school bus service ("school bus" is a usage, not a type of vehicle) but searching for things like "bus crash England" shows very, very few cases where a bus has overturned, even when it's come off the road and slid down a slope.
If [1] is anything to go by, the bus needs to hit a similarly heavy vehicle to overturn. Could the American school bus design be susceptible to climbing up/rolling over a car, then tipping, compared to the typical European low-floor lower-centre-of-gravity bus?
(No doubt there are other factors that influence the American school bus design.)
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/dec/16/bus-toppled-colli...
US school busses are heavy and sit very high. Busses can be hit by cars with little force imparted to the occupants. The most dangerous thing about school busses is the risk it poses to the other drivers that hit it: https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Cra...
https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=...
The days of falling battery prices in dollar terms are over.
Reference: https://qnovo.com/82-the-cost-components-of-a-battery/
Maybe there'll be some equilibrium price as manufacturing costs drop and material prices go up. It would be surprising though if LFP prices didn't keep dropping. (Especially retail prices, which seem to be around $300/kwh in the U.S.)
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-much-lithium-li-ion-vehic...
So, at the current elevated spot price, Li represents about 5% of the sticker price of a lithium battery. Plus, supply responses to demand growth in minerals tend to be relatively slow, which means that a short term price rise doesn't necessarily suggest a shortage of availability.
Whereas some work needs to be done to harden the infrastructure at the school district level to avoid electric bus outages.
https://www.electricitygoteborg.se/en/news/improved-urban-en...
Also helps that Volvo is headquartered in Goteborg, so always eager to try new things. The first "prototype" style BEV bus line opened early 2015.
Because at 150-250$/kWh retail price it's going to be extremely hard for local manufacturers to compete in the market against established Chinese manufacturers that can already make state of the art, high quality batteries at insane volumes.
I'm hoping to see sub-$100 per kwh LFP cells sometime soon in the U.S. through some channel that ordinary people can order from. It would be a huge boon for EV conversion if the batteries weren't hugely expensive. I think that's probably attainable. LFP batteries aren't fundamentally expensive, you just need to have good automation, cheap energy, and economies of scale. The input materials are relatively cheap. China's main advantage besides the patent thing is that they've been quietly building their battery manufacturing capabilities and supply chains for a couple decades, and it's hard to compete with that.
I grew up in a semi-temperate region that only had at most maybe a month of really cold temperatures each year. Those under-seat heaters were still very nice to be near and also helped to melt the snow and slush into just ice on the floor.
You should assume, from a heating and ventilation perspective, that the inside of a school bus is a mobile open air tent, but simultaneously also on the verge of being an enclosed space packed to the gills with people.
Cabin heating could be done with a heat pump for more efficiency, I suppose. Heating could consume quite a bit of power, but I suppose compared to the energy required to move a school bus around it's probably fairly minor.
What happens if/when they run out of funding?
Having a business productivity app go out of business with an "amazing journey" post is irritating but there are 50 other apps that will take their place. Introducing "as a service" here where there are serious legal and even civil rights issues in play is radically different.
Vehicle depreciation is a massive headache.
If Boeing's financial stability depended on the sucess of one particular aircraft lessor, that would be a huge problem.
You can find bus contracts given to the owners of single busses though those firms do t have large web presences.
I hope car usage goes down, especially a single person driving a big SUV. Walk, or bike, to where you need to go. Less cars, more safe.
Suburbs have been the only place where I’ve seen lots of yellow busses because everything is so spread out. Idk where that dude got his numbers, go to any city in the USA and you'll see kids taking public transit to school aka walking.
https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2016/15_0573.htm#:~:text=Esti....
I'm gonna guess that in at least some of these areas, they walk/take busses because the school system doesn't provide transportation.
The majority of children do not live in cities. Most people move to suburban/urban areas when they have kids.
> This study shows that young people living closer to school are more likely to walk to school than those living further away (Panter et al., 2008, Pont et al., 2009). The novel contribution of this work is the identification of the threshold distances that children walk to school, and that this increases as young people age; the criterion distances were 1421 m (0.8 miles) at 10 years, 1627 m (~1 mile) at 11 years and 3046 m (~1.9 miles) at 14 years.
However, note that US suburbs are often vastly more spread out while servicing the same size population: for example, Worcester, England at 100k population is only 12 square miles[2] and Chico California with 100k population is 34 square miles[3].
0: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135382921...
1: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5750341/Bigger-11-y...
You ever been to inner city? That’s probably where that 9% is from, unless you’ve got more stats you can pull up because it seems your only perspective is numbers you read on theatlantic or something along with your latte.
With less cars on the road as time goes on, I hope walking and public transit becomes a viable option. You ever seen kids going on the metro busses or light rail? I’ve only ever seen this in cities, and never in suburbs where I live now, except the kids who live across the street from the school.
https://www.ridezum.com/corporate-hq-hiring.html
It looks like they're modernizing the whole student transportation process: apps for parents/drivers/school admins, dynamic routing, monitoring, and metrics. They claim 20% reduction in student commute times. That's a big quality of life improvement.
I think the job would be quite interesting: geo, real-time, mobile, web, embedded, physical infrastructure, optimization, diverse user base, and many human factors. They're well-funded so probably pay decently.
The office photos show a large open plan, which could be an acoustic hellscape, like Google SF Spear St. If the space has enough sound-absorbing panels and dividers and quiet floors then it could be ok. Can any of you comment on the work environment?
Would come down to whether the installation/removal (to lower the "dry" weight for the warm seasons) would be worth the energy savings of not hauling around the supplemental battery weight.
Other options might be to use some kind of thermal mass for heating, perhaps a large heated mass or fluid tank? Not sure if there's any benefit there though beyond being able to swap out the fluid tank between runs faster than charging a battery.
There are plenty of EVs operating under arctic conditions in Norway, for example. And not just in Oslo where temperatures are mild. Here's a story about a Norwegian with a model 3 that lives on the north coast of Norway in the arctic circle: https://electrek.co/2020/02/11/tesla-model-3-arctic-circle-w...
It seems that that particular car has some features that are genuinely nice to have when it is minus 32. Like the ability to warm it up before you get into it. That costs energy of course and that explains most of the range hit you get.
Most recent EVs have ways to cool (high temperatures are also a problem) and heat batteries, which older cars and phevs would have lacked. And of course the process of charging and discharging batteries actually warms batteries up as well. That's why heat is a problem and probably a bigger problem from an engineering point of view. Yet nobody ever complains about Tesla's not working in the desert. It's kind of a solved problem. Extreme temperatures affect range and you need to plan accordingly. But otherwise the battery will work fine.
https://news.yahoo.com/cold-hard-truth-evs-winter-103037566....
If you are in a climate where freezing weather is common, you might want to swap it for a different brand. There are comparably priced options that work well in the cold (just look at the chart in the article).
All battery chemistry suffers from degraded performance in cold temperatures, because they all rely on chemical processes that are hampered by cold. Lithium batteries are in some ways more susceptible because they are just a more finicky battery chemistry overall, being far more sensitive to charging currents, temperatures, and voltages.
There's tons of articles and references out there about the cares that must be taken with batteries of various chemistries, and they all talk about the low temperature issues.
- https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2021-08-24-how-extreme-c...
- https://www.fluxpower.com/blog/the-importance-of-industrial-...
- https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-410-charging-at-hig....
- https://relionbattery.com/blog/the-best-battery-for-cold-wea....
Most relevant sentence in this article.
Shenzen in China switched all of their city buses to electric a few years ago. They have tens of thousands of them driving around there.
Is anyone else suspecting an "of course we'll loose money like crazy, until we hit 'em with the massive price increase" business model?
EDIT: Wow, huge response. 3 points to add:
- Yes, kids not breathing fumes is better...but that doesn't change the company's nor the school district's finances.
- No, I have no good data on whether the "vastly lower TCO will cover the higher up front cost..." theory is 100% correct, or utter BS.
- My one not-too-close data point: A friend worked for a metropolitan bus system ~2011. She said they were getting rid of their "~1.4 up-front cost" diesel-electric hybrid buses - because the real TCO was considerably worse than the older, straight-diesel buses.
Edit: Thought to look this up for SFMTA - 2020 proposed budget (projections as of 2019, chosen because it's the last "normal" year) - total revenue $1.2Bn, "Advertising, interest, and service fees" $54m.
OTOH, I would not be surprised to see these buses rusting in a storage lot within a decade because these firms have closed up shop and some random server somewhere is no longer responding to requests. I hope (but am not hopeful) that municipal and state governments take measures during procurement to ensure that they aren't being turned into captive customers.
Spent many years thinking it was healthy. Much regret.
What's this based on ? AFAIK many school districts already contract out their school bus service. Are we seeing that in those cases?
Oddly the reason why is different for the two fluids. Gasoline can catch fire quickly and form a fireball, whereas diesel is hard to ignite and won't help start a fire.
This movie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_5th_Wave_(film)
has a scene where the kids set a school bus on fire with the fuel which isn't realistic.
2m08s for Jet-A. 3m50s for #2 diesel. 6m03s for heating oil. 7m30s for kerosene (all those are basically the same and surprising to most how not flammable they are in liquid form). 10m15s for avgas. 11m30s for auto gas.
All you need is some tissue and a gas soldering iron or equivalent lighter. Lights up in under one second.
Thermal runaway, stranded energy and battery reignition should preclude EV usage to transport children until adequate safety measures are put in place. EV car fires are intense, high voltage and severe. A bus full of children fire doesn't bear thinking about.
They burn with the equivalent of a 220v welder across the whole battery skateboard, will literally melt aluminum wheels and body parts and require 20 tons of water to temporarily extinguish. There's a huge difference between an ICE vehicle fire, which is essentially rubber, upholstery and plastics burning sometime compounded by gasoline vapor and an EV thermal runaway trapped energy event. I think all EVs should be required to have manual escape locks etc at a minimum. https://youtu.be/J6eS6JzBn0k
A demonstration of a gasoline vs battery fire https://youtu.be/tuVxwmnhqP4
This is a EV fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdaFk3w6rUY
And this is a diesel school bus on fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nPrUdP_POg
If any vehicle catches on fire, you have to leave the vehicle, or risk death. There is no "safe fire"
The 220v mig welder example was to demonstrate the different fire characteristics of a trapped/runaway energy battery fire vs gasoline fire. All commercial vehicles such as school buses have a significant fire risk from hydraulic fluids used for brakes, steering etc.
Here is is a refuse truck hydraulic fire example https://youtu.be/aj8-JlRqoWc
The dramatic bus fire you found was probably a combination of that and upholstery. Diesel is much less flammable than gasoline, one of the reasons for its use in commercial vehicles. https://www.anl.gov/article/7-things-you-might-not-know-abou...
Again, a major concern for me is the over reliance on electric door locks in EVs, which have trapped Tesla drivers who then burnt to death in high voltage fires. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tesla-driv...
Manual locks would be far safer, especially on school bus full of children. I am not opposed to EVs but I do feel there is a very unrealistic utopian view of their strengths while completely ignoring weaknesses, mostly due to massive public relations persuasiveness.
I definitely agree that manual locks are safer -- school bus emergency exits don't even have locks, they simply only have latches on the inside. This isn't a problem with batteries though -- this is a problem with Tesla.
Electrification of bus fleets is an absolute good. Electric buses may cost more in the short run, but for the sake of children's health, not to mention the world they live in, school districts should be dumping diesel in favor of electric as soon as they can afford to do so. As taxpayers we should be ready to foot the bill.
There are real concerns with privatization of school bus fleets though. Safety obviously, but also advertising and marketing to children as other posters have pointed out. If a company offered school districts a subscription model with diesel buses we'd be rightfully suspicious of where this could lead. We should maintain these suspicions even as we encourage phasing out diesel fleets in favor of electric.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Student_(United_States)
Sounds like the model is to be the first mover and being entrenched by the time it's profitable without a price hike
What about when you consider total life cycle costs? Diesel fuel costs often many times of cost of the vehicle over its lifespan.
Fuel costs will likely increase quite a bit in the future.
If people just look at the upfront cost, they have that 2x or 3x gut reaction and just switch off.
Some nerdier types might draw up a spreadsheet and know exactly how many months they'd expect to break even and start saving.
People familiar with spreadsheets probably also don't have that much trouble getting loans and paying them back on time, and doing even more sums to see if that makes financial sense.
But your average school bus buyer perhaps needs someone else to do all that for them, hedge the risk and present it to them as an immediate saving on their monthly spend.
People have sold rooftop solar this way, or replaced kerosene lamps in Africa with solar and batteries, and EVs Vs monthly Car payment plus fuel.
To VCs, too
The swap should take place, and I'm now wondering why this hasn't occurred.
The Superintendent for business affairs that has an MBA from Columbia and earns $231,000, and should clearly be able to handle a spreadsheet and then making the yearly powerpoint presentations.
There's no way a decision like this gets made without a several "independent assessments" happening as a CYA move.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/09/hugh-jackman-mo...
But maybe in this case, the buyer needs that sales pitch not for themselves but for the people who would be angry if they did something financially sensible with future payoff.
I'd say it's the opposite a lot of times. EVs are one such product. People will say, "sure I'm paying 20k more for the car, but I'll make it up in fuel savings and zero maintenance!" without ever calculating how much fuel and maintenance you'd actually have to use to break even. Then, of course, there is the regulatory and temporal risk that energy costs today aren't what they might be down the road, and that there are some high-ticket items an EV can have fail itself.
It's hardly ever a no-brainer, because the invisible hand tends to make it so.
>People have sold rooftop solar this way
So many companies have gone bust because of this.
This isn't a case where a good product isn't succeeding because "hurr durr the public is dumb". People have run the numbers. It just doesn't work, yet.
In my city, the original hybrids used Toyota Prius batteries and deep cycled them, which they weren't designed for, killing them and requiring regular replacements. That couldn't have been good for the budget.
Leasing them with performance guarantees moves not just the costs, but also the risks to a specialist better suited to carrying them.
I don’t know if this firm is legit, but the deal could make sense.
In rural area, yellow busses need to travel for two hours morning and night. And for extra-curricular activities, like transportation to away games, drives can last five hours or more.
These districts have transferred that risk to the provider. Which seems reasonable.
We desperately need to force electric vehicles for the upcoming USPS replacements too.
The funding / reform bill passed, but as far as I can tell it does not mandate or address the fleet. DeJoy said he was replacing with gas. There was a proposed bill but I can't find any recent news on it.
Ridiculous to spend that much money on 100% custom built vehicles that are gas powered.
On the consumer side, let's look at Tesla Model Y vs. Lexus RX 350. I am using "premium" makes on both sides of this equations. If we want to go with a cheaper ICE then it should be compared with a cheaper EV. Idea being, there is a reasonable comparison where EV comes out ahead on TCO.
Cost / mile: $0.04 vs. $0.10 Difference in purchase cost: $55K (base model Lexus) vs $59K (base model). Include $7500 Fed Credit this comes to ~$56K (assuming a 35% marginal tax rate) Average miles per year: 12K. So fuel savings of ~$720 Even assuming a very generous cost of capital even TCO over 2 years beats ICE. That's before maintenance costs (which seem to be lower for EV).
Anyway. Assuming 27 mpg for the Dart (this is what Fuelly says average Dart owners experience) and $4.67 gasoline (the US average from a few days ago), should cost around 17 cents a mile in gasoline. Assuming an average of 14.8 cents per kWh (the US average from February) and 3 miles per kWh (somewhat conservative, but close enough) for the Bolt, you'd be looking at 5 cents per mile in electricity.
Not a perfect comparison, the Bolt would be brand new with a warranty, etc, but at least it's not a luxury EV comparison, just an appliance car like a Dart. You'd break even on costs at 76K miles.
Of course, at that point the Bolt has just reached the mileage the Dart started at, and so it will quickly pull ahead in TCO. If you do a lot of road trips you might not like it, but if you primarily drive in the city you will really like not having to stop once a week to get gas.
Due to this, commercial fleets in my view have a much clearer picture here than personal vehicle decisions. This is also particularly driven by personal vehicle purchases being driven less by “TCO” in a strict sense but rather “what is my monthly payment”.
Cummins (the major manufacturer of engines, generators etc) will service the high voltage parts of the bus.
I guess, but a "premium" Model Y doesn't have any features that a far lesser ICE doesn't have, with inferior build quality. That's kind of the point. A premium Honda, VW or Toyota SUV are better comparisons, and substantially cheaper. Of course, that makes the TCO much more competitive...
It's a pretty big transportation sector we're talking about (half a million of these buses in the US), so it will not be a fast transition and early adopters will be paying higher costs than later ones to iron out the kinks. Most districts are probably waiting for someone else to try it out first.
Fewer fluids required, just your differential and some coolant for the motors really.
Given the specialization of parts, it's far more likely that any performed maintenance is going to be more of a swap for known-good parts and sending them off to the home-office for reconditioning.
What are the odds that school districts are even legally allowed to sign such an NDA?
If you trust google search, my 2 minute research suggests the federal government explicitly disallows NDAs from binding them, and that in government overall NDAs are really rare. But that information is worth roughly how much it cost me to search for it.
The question boils down to: how many people are both systems currently moving. What would it take to build up the other system to operate at the first system's scale?
I can see EV buses being practical for future urban short distance pickup and drop off, but the longer haul rural routes, especially in cold climates, seem a long way off to the EV obsessed as a solution to anything. Huge subsidies and grants may seduce a few school boards but the reality is diesel loads replaced by EV are no where near ready for prime time.
What could immediately help the local pollution aspects of EV heavy vehicles is some sort of tire particulate collection device to stop spread. Tire pollution is a huge problem that is probably more important than where energy is obtained from near or far https://www.greencarcongress.com/2020/03/20200308-emissionsa...
All else equal (vehicle class, size, performance, driving style), the operating cost per mile of an EV is 1/4 to 1/2 the operating cost per mile of a diesel or gasoline vehicle, even in states with very expensive electricity like California or Hawaii.
> How about other components like Ownership and Support?
Do you mean depreciation and maintenance? Depreciation on recent EVs has been just like other types of vehicles in their respective classes. Granted, these are relatively new cars - there isn't much longitudinal data on EV maintenance, but every indication is that it should be less than ICE vehicles.
And can you put a price on the great driving experience of an EV (flat power curve, low center of gravity, silent, no combustion smell)? Probably, but I haven't tried.
Since I charge at home, this is only a pain point on road trips (though diminishing with the growing number of high power chargers along highways). However, I understand how it's a pain for apartment dwellers who don't have their own charging stations.
So we need better street-side public charging infrastructure for them - but also for single-family-home dwellers with a second car that doesn't fit in the driveway. Living in a single-family-home shouldn't be a precondition for driving an EV.
Lots of idling. Lots of low RPM operation. Lots of stop and start wasting a lot of energy into the brakes.
A school bus is practically engineered to be an EV propaganda piece.
(Although, field trips?)
This lists the GVWR for the diesels at up to 36,200 lbs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Bird_All_American
This lists the GVWR for electrics at the same: https://assets.ctfassets.net/ucu418cgcnau/362sQcGinJzFxVqFh0...
Electrics also tend to benefit from better traction in crummy conditions because the batteries create a fixed, lower center of gravity.
Do note that the drive system for these EV buses is apparently built by Cummins. For Cummins to put the effort in, they see a reason.
So, in the OP, now I see:
"A 2020 study conducted by Atlas Public Policy for Washington state indicated that falling battery costs and rising manufacturing volumes should bring electric school buses within total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) parity with fossil-fueled buses by 2030."
Hmm ... 2030???
Then I notice:
"While most of its projects have started small, CEO Duncan McIntyre sees the Montgomery County project — now at 25 electric buses and set to expand to 326 over the next four years — as the model for the future."
So, from
100 * 25 / 326 = 7.669%
we're talking so far a little less than 8% of the fleet. So full EV (electric vehicle) has a way to go.
Now I'm wondering ....
Now I notice near the beginning:
"Billions of dollars of federal and state grants and incentives are flowing to U.S. school districts to help them electrify their fleets."
"Billions"? Now I understand!
Same as usual: (1) Always look for the hidden agenda. (2) Follow the money.
Next, the bus fleet is in Montgomery County, Maryland. I used to live there. Relatively wealthy place! Lot of money! Lot of interest in social issues! Close to DC, the main money pot!
Next, what's this with a fleet of 326 busses??? What the ...??? So many busses? Are they in the school business or the bus business? Sounds like could run quite a good school system just for the costs of 326 busses. In my school, grades 1-12, there were no busses. 97+% of the kids went on to college -- not a bad school system. The year before me, three guys went to Princeton and two of them ran against some third guy for President of the Freshman Class. In my year, MIT came recruiting. The guy who did go to MIT -- I beat him by a little on the Math SAT. Must have been an OK school. Kids got to and from school on their own, rain, shine, hot, cold, ice, snow, or clear. One good way was to WALK. Another was a bicycle. But, no school busses.
Want to save money on 326 Diesel busses? Good. Here's a way, and get to save on not just 8% of the fleet but all of it, and get the savings tomorrow and don't have to wait until 2030. Uh, and save $billions. How to do this magic, more amazing than anything electrical??? Easy: Junk all the busses. Done.
Lesson: No matter how productive the US economy might be from automation or whatever, various interest groups can get with government and waste the gains. E.g., there in Monkey County, a lot of the people were, likely are, living in apartments they RENT. They'd be MUCH better off OWNING a single family detached house.
Next, I just got a direct message from Darwin: The birth rate in Monkey County is less than 2 per woman. Sooooo, the population is shrinking. The people of Monkey County who want busses instead of schooling are going -- I have the word right here -- extinct. If the government were wasting less, there could be more motherhood, and the moms could work out how to get the kids to/from school without 326 busses.