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Comment by jtlienwis | Hacker News Reader

How much will they weigh compared to a Diesel bus? Road damage is to the fourth power of axle weight. Any cost savings may be just shifted to the road department for fixing pot holes. I think the VW EV is almost twice the weight of a same size ICE car. 16x the road damage. Plus, how much damage when this EV bus slides on the ice and hits something? Twice the damage if twice the weight.

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It seems that these are the same weight. That's probably not a coincidence.

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.

The battery doesn’t necessarily need to be that large, since the range can be small (<25 miles for most school districts assuming that they can charge during the day). Probably a school bus could get away with an battery the same size as one in a Tesla, so the weight of the rest of the bus probably dominates. Probably the weight of the students alone is a lot more when fully loaded.

School bus weight is generally seen as a good thing, because we care more about keeping kids safe than road damage or damage to other vehicles.

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