With EVs slowly becoming more dominant in central London (most taxis, and many buses and delivery vans are electric now), I've several times had the slightly eerie (but happy) experience of being at busy intersections and noticing that it was unusually quiet. Then looking around and seeing that every vehicle waiting at the intersection was electric or plug-in hybrid.
Ah, we love the electric ones here in sweden!
Of course they have to stop ~20 minutes to recharge instead of just turning back.
And of course when it's cold (which surprisingly does happen in sweden) the batteries can't hold enough charge to do 1 run, so they can't run.
London's electric buses (mostly UK-built bus bodies with BYD drivetrains and batteries) have large enough battery packs for them to run all day without charging. They get recharged overnight, when electricity is cheap, while parked in the bus depots.
As of March, London had 785 fully electric buses in service, out of a total fleet of about 9000. The fleet is planned to be fully electric by 2034, which could be brought forward subject to additional funding.
It will be interesting to see if they stick with the overnight-charging model or whether charging while in service will make sense on some routes.
Do you have a source that they run the entire day with no charging?
Small?! The majority of London buses are double-deckers, around 11 meters in length with capacities up to 87 passengers (combined seating + standing). Perhaps not the world's largest buses, but I certainly wouldn't call them small!
> "Do you have a source that they run the entire day with no charging?"
Here's an old press release from when they were first introduced: "The buses are equipped with BYD-designed and built Iron-Phosphate batteries, delivering 345 kWh of power ... The batteries can power the bus for over 24 hours and up to 190 miles of typical urban driving on the service routes with a single daily recharging requiring only four hours."
https://en.byd.com/news/transport-for-london-launches-the-fi...
(The reality is that on many central London bus routes, there just isn't anywhere where they could stop for an extended period for recharging. But as more electric buses expand to suburban routes, maybe that will be less of an issue)
The maker's estimation and the real life often differ quite much. Is there something about real times?
But that doesn’t make London buses small, because they’re double-deckers. Instead of increasing the length, they increase the height.
In any case, bus size is a red herring when it comes to electrification. A larger bus simply gives you more space to install larger batteries, provided you don’t exceed class/axle weight limits etc. Being longer and having more axles, an articulated bus should be even easier to electrify than a double decker!
London has been operating electric buses for almost 10 years now and has a fleet of nearly 800 units. If they weren’t performing to expectations, I’m sure we would have heard about it and they wouldn’t keep buying them!
Being double decker means nothing when almost nobody wants to bother to go up. But even then. They're still smaller.
> London has been operating electric buses for almost 10 years now and has a fleet of nearly 800 units. If they weren’t performing to expectations, I’m sure we would have heard about it and they wouldn’t keep buying them!
Yes, public administrations are known to run at maximum efficiency and never let any other considerations to decide what to buy.
Like here in sweden they're obviously corrupt when deciding what to buy for public transport.
[1] - https://www.kwik-fit.com/tyres/information/tyre-labelling
Studded snow tires are louder than other tires, snow tires without studs are softer than normal tires so less noise. Modern snow tires without studs are surprisingly good on ice, which is the only place studded tires can compete.
Noise levels is one of the things tires are rated by, but a quiet tire would normally require a softer compound and softer compound wears out faster than harder tires
It must be the same group of people with their anecdotes about seatbelts and airbags making cars more dangerous.
https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/news/electric-and...
I'm an EV fan, but lower noise levels makes them more dangerous, not less, at least to the people they can potentially hit (of course for people living next to roads, noise is more hazardous from a more general health point of view). Cars are killer machines and stuff like seatbelts and airbags protect passengers but not pedestrians or cyclists hit by the car. So if you are a pedestrian or cyclist, then having the ability to hear the car is really great.
It's asking the outside people to shoulder the responsibility of avoiding the killer machine. I'd rather have quiet cars and much harsher crackdowns on drivers that use them in ways that jeopardy the lives of others. There are many things drivers can do to reduce the hazard, such as slowing down, buying smaller vehicles, using cars that don't isolate outside noise, only driving when in good mental condition, etc.
It's crazy to me that we allow cars that isolate their cockpit more and more from their surroundings (quiet, small windows, high up from the ground) and instead ask the surroundings to avoid the danger.
I know, ultimately it is each person's own responsibility to avoid death, and it might make sense for the legal system to reflect that. But we don't have these laws with other dangerous things ("it's okay to practise throwing molotov cocktails in public squares, as long as you wear bright clothing so people know to keep their distance"), so cars are sort of an outlier.
I get what you're saying, but IMO, that just wouldn't work well.
If you want a better system, it's better to make as many changes as possible to the system so that problems are impossible and/or unlikely.
Personal responsibility will always have it's place, but it'll never be particularly reliable.
> It's crazy to me that we allow cars that isolate their cockpit more and more from their surroundings (quiet, small windows, high up from the ground) and instead ask the surroundings to avoid the danger.
Being quiet and high aren't issues here. Drivers aren't going to hear pedestrians - not at 30 mph. And I've never been in a vehicle that had windows that I felt affected my awareness, aside from the rear window of the Prius.
> I know, ultimately it is each person's own responsibility to avoid death, and it might make sense for the legal system to reflect that. But we don't have these laws with other dangerous things
Sure, but that's because there's enormous social utility in allowing people to drive cars. If there was a similar utility in letting people throw molotov cocktails, then there'd probably be some sort of dispensation to do just what you suggest.
I disagree with this premise.
If you want to make a system better, you need to enable as many information flows as possible, shorten feedback loops, etc. The classic Meadows leverage points. The proposal of making cars noisy has the opposite effect, by sweeping problems under the rug.
Just "doing as many things as possible" is a great way to paint oneself into a local optimum.
It's adding a layer of redundancy. The driver needs to pay attention but should that fail, hopefully the car noise will alert the pedestrian, who should also be aware that a car is nearby.
I ride a bike. I don’t ride a loud bike: it’s still within Australian limits for sale, but it has some volume, and a little bit of lower end thump.
Two bikes before that I rode a 250cc four cylinder bike, that did up to 18,000 RPM. It, again, was within Australian limits, although honestly not by much.
In the middle of those two, I rode a 600cc bike that was significantly quieter than either of those.
My riding remained mostly the same, but one of the three I had significantly more people changing lanes while I was quite literally right beside them.
I don’t believe that ridiculous straight through drag pipes on high displacement twin engines are necessary, but being as loud as another car absolutely saves lives.
I don't think it has to be, it is definitely a safety feature that they make a noise, but these people try to justify burning petrol to do this passively "positive" thing
It's enough of an issue that early Priuses beeped while backing up.
I'm a look both ways kind of person, so I don't really "get" it, but I can also understand that not everyone prioritizes situational awareness.
You can hear in all directions but only see so wide.
A backup beeper is a safety feature purposely installed on trucks because it helps to hear that the truck is backing up before it runs into you.
That said, I still look both ways before I step out into the street.
Sound can only be used for positive identification - if you can hear a car, it's there. It cannot be used for negative identification - if you can't hear a vehicle, it doesn't mean anything.
This is because there are far too many factors that are at play when it comes to the ability to hear:
- Not every dangerous vehicle makes appreciable sound - an ICE car with its engine off, an EV, a bike, any other small personal transportation device, even a skateboard
- The sound may be masked by another, louder sound
- The sound may seem to come from a different direction, there's no telling how the surrounding environment will reflect the sound around before it's reaches one's ears
- The human crossing may, like you point out, be on autopilot, distracted, or otherwise not perceptive to sound
Because of these, and likely more, factors relying on sound when crossing the street is a horrible idea and will get you killed.
I cannot emphasize this enough, looking both ways when crossing *is mandatory*!
Not going to make as much difference if you live near a motorway though since the tyre noise there is really really loud. (I still think it might make some difference though because engines going at 70mph are really loud too.)
At low speeds modern gas cars are almost completely quiet too.
And not to forget the tire noise is still quite loud compared to people just talking