Electric school buses more than doubled in USA from March 2022 to June 2023 | Hacker News Reader

Electric school buses more than doubled in USA from March 2022 to June 2023

cleantechnica.com

24 pointselorant15 comments

I haaaaaaated the smell of diesel fumes when riding the school bus as a kid. And I still hate smelling it when dropping the kid off at the bus stop in the morning. Fleet vehicles like school busses are great candidates for electrification because they sit in one spot all night long, and have dedicated maintenance staff and long capital horizons. However given the shortages of lithium in the market, I do wonder if electrifying other vehicles would have been better from a carbon reduction perspective - buses are mass transit, and therefore already far more efficient per passenger-mile than a personal vehicle. Would electrifying a hundred PHEVs been better for the environment or fuel diversification? I won’t complain too much, though. We gotta electrify them all eventually, and thank goodness I (eventually) won’t have to smell diesel exhaust in my neighborhood anymore.

The lithium price bubble has burst. I’d imagine if there was a shortage the prices would remain high. https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2023/12/27/lithium-p...

I wonder if the current refresh cycle for school buses is a barrier for these. Schools are used to keeping a bus in service for 12-15 years or more. And the bus budget is built around that longevity. I don't know if the electric buses, battery, etc, are built for that, or if they have enough runtime savings to offset the capital cost.

One source: https://www.ridezum.com/blog/school-bus-fleet-age-the-hidden...

Other busses are used the whole day, which seems diffucult to do on batteries (stops too short to charge). School busses, however, are used twice per day, which seems perfect for battery powered busses.

If any bus works on batteries, it's a school bus.

> If any bus works on batteries, it's a school bus.

That probably is true. On the other hand, school buses are underused, so I guess owners won’t want to spend much money buying new ones early.

> Other busses are used the whole day, which seems difficult to do on batteries (stops too short to charge)

They aren’t too short. Googling “automatic electric bus charging at stops” gets many different offerings for rapidly charging at every bus stop and/or at turnaround terminals (where drivers often have to take a break by law)

Also many tenders for new city buses in the rich part of Western Europe have requirements that effectively say “buses must be electric” nowadays, and I haven’t heard of lots of buses running out of power there.

Part of the reason for those requirements is the EU directive “on the promotion of clean road transport vehicles in support of low-emission mobility” (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:02...)

It (roughly speaking) says 22.5% of new buses must be zero-emission in 2025.

Some countries easily met that target, though, so that likely isn’t the only reason. https://think.ing.com/articles/all-aboard-europes-electric-b... says:

“In 2016, the Netherlands adopted the ambitious target to fully decarbonise its public bus fleet of 5,500 buses by 2030, with 100% zero-emission new inflow from 2025 onwards. In 2020, over 80% of newly registered buses were already zero emission, resulting in a fleet share close to 25% in early 2021”

and

“Germany aims to have electrified half of its total public bus fleet in 2030 in its Klimaschutzprogramm.”

Modern EV’s easily least 25 years. So, if anything EV school buses could have longer lifespans due to lower maintenance requirements.

Critically, there’s multiple routes modest range decline is unlikely to be an issue as long as newer buses are assigned to longer routes.

> Modern EV’s easily least 25 years.

Source, please?

Existing cars and electrical systems, there isn’t a lot of novelty involved here.

“Standard cars in this day and age are expected to keep running up to 200,000 miles, while cars with electric engines are expected to last for up to 300,000 miles.” https://www.caranddriver.com/research/a32758625/how-many-mil...

Of note older cars tend to go to be driven by teens etc who drive less meaning EV range is less of a concern. Meanwhile battery replacement costs keep falling, 13k to replace a model 3’s battery is way down and predicted to falling further. So the used market is likely to segregate with some % seeing 1 battery replacement in their lifetime and others having quite significant degradation.

> are expected to keep running up to 200,000 miles, while cars with electric engines are expected to last

English might not be my native language but, as far as i know, "last" is not equal with "expected to last".

Well, yes, but to say that it will last means it cannot fail before then, which obviously cannot be true. Any vehicle can fail right out of the lot, so it's about when they usually fail, or how long they usually last.

There's definitely a lot of variability on the ICE side. There are some brands/models that do last 200k miles, but there are plenty that don't. And many that could, but the required maintenance cost past a certain point is too high compared to the current value of the vehicle.

From 598 in March 2022 to 1,285 in June 2023.

There were nearly 450,000 school buses in the U.S. in 2023. So < 0.3% of the fleet

Always be wary of headlines talking in rate of change without absolutes, and vise versa.

Only 7 more doublings to replace the whole fleet.

And don’t even have to replace the entire fleet due to structural demographics and the decline in fertility rate; lots less kids going forward.

https://www.ey.com/en_us/strategy/declining-enrollment-in-pu...

https://www.axios.com/2023/01/08/public-school-enrollment-de...

exponential growth takes a bit of time to kick in. You can't go from 0->5% overnight

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