Speaking of Green new deal and our buses

[windtrader]

It is a lot easier to believe when you see it.

EV is here and any chat about its viability is simply a waste of time. Here's a picture of a restaurant we dined at on a short road trip last week. It is about half way between LA and SF. The picture  shows the Tesla charging station area; there is another for other hookups.

I'd have to dig too hard to post another of a company parking lot with a long row of chargers for employees.

GM recently stated it would only build EV not that far out.

[luvrbus]

The initial MCI electric buses are not for long trips.  The range is short enough that they'll really only be for day trips in the immediate area.  They will have to go back to the garage for charging, or if they do go out of town they will have to find a bus company that has the required charger.  You aren't going to charge these buses from a standard 110 volt outlet.  They probably won't charge from a standard EV charger either due to the size of the battery pack.

The initial market for these buses is going to mostly be contracts or places that require electric buses.  I can see these being used for shuttles in national parks where the Parks service requires only electric buses to cut down on pollution.  Or, to provide guided tours in areas where diesel buses are no longer allowed.

Progressive cities may very well say that any charter bus trips have to be in electric buses where distance allows.

Tulsa County Ok owned a electric MCI that just sold at auction,the bus never made a round trip without breaking down hauling prisoners from Tulsa to McAlester a 100 mile 1 way trip the old Blue Birds where sent to finish hauling the prisoners every trip

[windtrader]

Every new technology has problems that are resolved over time or the entire idea gets scrapped. I'm always on the lookout for batteries in the secondary market and it is rare to find them being sourced from electric buses. BYD has quite a few running around but I'm guessing that spares are kept around to avoid parts availability issues. Also, newer battery banks don't simply die but cells and modules do, so extra battery banks to harvest is a good and cheap way.

[CrabbyMilton]

It is a lot easier to believe when you see it.

EV is here and any chat about its viability is simply a waste of time. Here's a picture of a restaurant we dined at on a short road trip last week. It is about half way between LA and SF. The picture  shows the Tesla charging station area; there is another for other hookups.

I'd have to dig too hard to post another of a company parking lot with a long row of chargers for employees.

GM recently stated it would only build EV not that far out.

That won't last long. Long term such practice will give the impression that electricity is free. Just plug it in...

[CrabbyMilton]

The initial MCI electric buses are not for long trips.  The range is short enough that they'll really only be for day trips in the immediate area.  They will have to go back to the garage for charging, or if they do go out of town they will have to find a bus company that has the required charger.  You aren't going to charge these buses from a standard 110 volt outlet.  They probably won't charge from a standard EV charger either due to the size of the battery pack.

The initial market for these buses is going to mostly be contracts or places that require electric buses.  I can see these being used for shuttles in national parks where the Parks service requires only electric buses to cut down on pollution.  Or, to provide guided tours in areas where diesel buses are no longer allowed.

Progressive cities may very well say that any charter bus trips have to be in electric buses where distance allows.

[luvrbus]

I heard this argument before a gal of diesel vs killowatt hours

[richard5933]

For those who are dismissing the EV option for heavy vehicles (trucks and buses)...

Assuming we ignore the ever-growing fleet of vehicles out there testing the technology and making rapid improvements, what do you guys propose we do moving forward?

Are you saying that we're fine using 100-year-old technology to move vehicles and that the internal combustion engine is the end-all-be-all? I'm really curious what you think the future of heavy vehicles should look like if you don't think that the EV is the correct path.

[chessie4905]

Dreamer. How about Blue Rhino battery exchange at Walmarts. One thing that is going to need to happen is standardization of batteries to a few instead of many.The biggest impact will be to convert the short trip users. Thats where user acceptance will happen fastest. Already more are considering ev's than just a few years ago. Longer range will come slower. I'm sure we aren't done with breakthroughs in battery technology. Even solar panels are getting constantly better, just like heat pumps.

[CrabbyMilton]

Belfert, I see you're from the Twin Cities area. For many years, I have visited MALL OF AMERICA for my "walking vacation". There are plenty of hotel shuttle vans and buses that come into that specific section and most of the vans and bus chassis are FORD with a few GM's However for the last few years, there has been a few RAM PROMASTER vans converted to all electric. Well, back in 2019 I was talking to my hotel shuttle driver about those and he said that he knows one of the drivers. He said this driver has a big box of hand warmers just in case. Makes sense since there are many people over 70 and in the middle of winter, you don't want to konk out in the freeway back to the hotel. Point being, even short distances, there us understandable skepticism to the point where it needs to prove itself some more. Not saying these things are bad but it's how it's perceived that can make all of the difference.

[Nova Eona]

It doesn't seem quite fair to judge an entire technology market based off the first-gen aftermarket/mid-stream conversions a hotel makes use of, does it?

I live in New Hampshire and see a surprising number of Teslas out there - despite the cold, I have yet to see a single one towing a generator or broken down on the side of the road, and have never heard of their drivers packing extra heating equipment as a matter of course.  Obviously there's more engineering involved in a shuttle or full bus than for a passenger car, but that's a matter of scale more than anything.

[Jim Blackwood]

Sorry but I can't just hop on this bandwagon, at least not yet. To start with, your subterranean battery swapping system just got a LOT more expensive. Do you think automated equipment is cheap? That one machine you are talking about is going to go for over a million bucks minimum and that's not counting the excavation, landscaping, conveyance, storage, charging, inventory, etc, etc, etc. So each of these modern up to date battery swap installations of yours are going to run somewhere between 2.5 and 5 million bucks each. Whereas your corner gas store probably goes around 1/2 to 1M.

So your cars cost twice as much, your battery swappers cost up to 10 times as much, and there will be hiccups.

As I said, yes it can be done, but somebody is going to have to pay for all of that. In the end all the hidden costs will come home to roost and it'll be nowhere near as attractive as it was when electricity was "free". All these things mean the technology is not yet mature enough for prime time, and it won't be for another decade or two based on typical development times.

But go ahead and push forwards. The one thing I have learned is anytime you get in a hurry it costs you and the bigger the hurry the higher the cost. So go right ahead, just as long as I'm not the one paying for it.

Jim

[richard5933]

Sorry but I can't just hop on this bandwagon, at least not yet. To start with, your subterranean battery swapping system just got a LOT more expensive. Do you think automated equipment is cheap? That one machine you are talking about is going to go for over a million bucks minimum and that's not counting the excavation, landscaping, conveyance, storage, charging, inventory, etc, etc, etc. So each of these modern up to date battery swap installations of yours are going to run somewhere between 2.5 and 5 million bucks each. Whereas your corner gas store probably goes around 1/2 to 1M.

So your cars cost twice as much, your battery swappers cost up to 10 times as much, and there will be hiccups.

As I said, yes it can be done, but somebody is going to have to pay for all of that. In the end all the hidden costs will come home to roost and it'll be nowhere near as attractive as it was when electricity was "free". All these things mean the technology is not yet mature enough for prime time, and is won't be for another decade or two based on typical development times.

But go ahead and push forwards. The one thing I have learned is anytime you get in a hurry it costs you and the bigger the hurry the higher the cost. So go right ahead, just as long as I'm not the one paying for it.

Jim

So if everyone waits until the technology is mature enough for prime time before adopting, just how does technology get mature enough for prime time.

People said similar things at the start of the video cassette revolution. "It will never catch on", "The machines are way too expensive", "People won't be happy watching at home instead of the theater", etc. etc. etc. Machines very quickly dropped from thousands to very affordable.

You're correct that this is all going to cost quite a bit at first. So did installing the infrastructure for internal combustion engines. Those pipelines, refineries, storage tanks, underground station tanks, etc. didn't come for free either. Good thing there were companies and businesses willing to take the chance and move forward with things.

As the technology evolves there will be smart companies that get in on the early stages. The others will look around in a couple of decades and wonder where all their customers went just like Kodak, Sears, and Sony Walkman are doing now after not keeping up with the latest.

Will the new technology be for every customer or fleet operator? Of course not, but my guess is that there will be plenty of incentives offered to get the early adopters on the road, just like Tesla has done to get their charging stations installed in every corner of the country.

[windtrader]

Electricity to fuel a EV costs money, anyone who thinks it is free lost too many marbles. EV stations charge, you don't just drive up and plug it in. When you charge at home, you pay your monthly electricity bill, maybe not much if net metering drops it to zero.


All the hoopla over range is mostly over. Many moving closer to 300 range, unless you are on a long trip, you will almost certainly be home and plugged in before being empty. For that matter, carefully study your typical distance driven in one or two days. I bet most can go a couple days between charge ups at home.


So, you take a trip. Most medical professionals recommend taking a break every few hours, so stop half way and have a smoke and a Coke. Supercharging tech is pretty amazing and you can get a decent boost in a short time. Again, stopping is needed if your trip is longer than the range of the vehicle. I'm guessing most average consumers can live with this sort of inconvenience when it arises.

[Jim Blackwood]

But wait, there's more!

Your typical gas-n-go has up to 2 dozen refill spots, (six double stacked 2 sided islands) where we were talking about a single high speed battery swapping machine that can do the job in 5 minutes, roughly akin to a refill. Just what do you think happens when you multiply that installation cost by 24? Now you are talking about  a $60 Million dollar installation! For ONE gas station. Government going to pay for that? I sure hope not.

And then how about all those batteries? Have you looked at the number of cars that go in and out of one of those stations in an hour's time? Even if it took no more than an hour to fast charge a battery, which would be seriously pushing things, at peak you'd have to have an underground warehouse full of charged batteries to handle rush hour. So now this underground charger of yours just became a four story underground warehouse and charging facility with power cables the size of Hoover Dam. OK, that's a slight exaggeration but think about it. You HAVE to consider the infrastructure to make something like this work.

Jim

[Nova Eona]

I keep seeing the detractors shouting 'electricity isn't free!' which strikes me as a total strawman - who is saying that the electricity is free?  If you have electric heat in your house, do you think that is free?  Do you run your air conditioner full-blast all summer because electricity is free?  Even if the origin source of the electricity is effectively indefinite - solar or wind for example - obviously there are substantial costs in harvesting and transporting that energy.

Pointing out costs in the infrastructure as a dismissal of the technology is not a good faith argument - keep in mind we've had many decades to refine our gas/diesel distribution system, it's folly to think that there will not be a similar evolution for electric vehicles.

To an earlier point made - for those here vehemently against EVs, what do you see as the future of transportation?  What will people be driving in 50 years if not electric, and why?  Sometimes it seems like those opposed are just looking backward instead of considering how to actually move forward.