100% electric buses

[CrabbyMilton]

I know this article is about skoolies but the same idea could apply to all buses.
It shows promise but what happens in the winter when the heater fans are going full blast? How long will the battery last before the propulsion motor konks out under those conditions?

http://www.schoolbusfleet.com/article/713421/can-electric-school-buses-go-the-distance

[Iceni John]

Some years ago eBay was listing a Blue Bird TC2000 electric school bus from Beaumont CA.   The ad said it needed new batteries  -  who knows how much a busload of batteries costs?   I remember thinking at the time that using the A/C in the summer or the heaters in the winter would reduce the bus's range to only a few miles.   I also wondered that if the roof were completely carpeted with PV panels would it would make any useful difference to the range  -  my 2kW of panels occupies about 22 feet of roof length, so it's conceivable that a bus could have up to about 4 kW of PV.   However, even 4 kW won't go very far to charge a battery bank large enough to power a school bus any useful distance.

With modern battery technologies an electric small bus could be viable for predictable short distances, but I feel that an on-board generator back-up system is probably also necessary.   Whether it's more cost-effective than a CNG-powered bus is debatable, but battery buses are just the thing for politicians to claim kudos for from an unquestioning public at election time.

John

[TomC]

Too many batteries if you want any kind of range. The solution that is being experimented now is using a micro turbine to create a constant 200hp of charging (turbines are very efficient running at near full speed at their designed horsepower). Then hill climbing can use the battery pack also. Good Luck, TomC

[HB of CJ]

Or ... perhaps a good example of what happens when voters outnumber tax payers and school districts end up with way too much money.  Other peoples money.  Electric vehicles are probably OK in specific applications but the attempt to waste tax dollars playing around with all electric school buses is not a good idea.

Respectfully.

[CrabbyMilton]

Yes indeed one can detect much appeasement to the greenies. Even though you need to use coal to generate the electricity to recharge these things. The solution obviously is 100% nuclear but the greenies run in the basement and scream and the very word.
A hybrid version is probably the best of both worlds right now and the hybrid idea is becoming a very proven idea but a long way to go before the good old internal combustion engine goes the way of the square wheel and 8 track.
100% electric buses may do well in very short range operations such as those buses that circulate around the ramp area and possibly the shuttles to the rental car lots as long as they have gasoline or diesel backup buses in the fleet.

[CrabbyMilton]

Perhaps just a small amount of battery power can be used to wire the seats in order to keep the little monsters under control.

[edvanland]

Always tickles me the electric cars are zero emissions but the electricity to charge them has emissions and who pays for the electric when they are plugged in away from home base.

[windtrader]

Always tickles me the electric cars are zero emissions but the electricity to charge them has emissions and who pays for the electric when they are plugged in away from home base.

Hydro and solar generation are emission during production

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[Zephod]

Perhaps just a small amount of battery power can be used to wire the seats in order to keep the little monsters under control.

Hands and feet securely chained to the seat with a hood to stop them screaming and spitting would work well too.


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[Zephod]

Always tickles me the electric cars are zero emissions but the electricity to charge them has emissions and who pays for the electric when they are plugged in away from home base.

I'm amazed nobody has covered an electric care in solar panels so that over a few days or weeks it could recharge itself.


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[Jeremy]

I'm amazed nobody has covered an electric care in solar panels so that over a few days or weeks it could recharge itself.

If you Google you will find lots of examples of that, plus buses as below.



Stop-start transit-type buses on regular routes are the perfect candidate for being 100% electric because they can make full use of both regenerative braking and, with the necessary infrastructure, inductive charging at every bus stop. There is at least one such system already in operation in the UK where I believe the buses also run driverless in dedicated lanes for some parts of their journey. My own city has quite a big fleet of electric buses as well, although despite seeing them every day I'm not sure quite how 'electric' they really are (I've always assumed they were actually hybrids like the new Routemasters etc)

Jeremy

[Jeremy]

This article about the buses in my local city refers to the "first all-electric bus park & ride service", but whether that means the buses themselves are all-electric I'm not entirely sure

http://www.nottinghampost.com/new-3-2m-electric-buses-help-make-nottingham-a-world-leader-in-public-transport-says-mp/story-29989124-detail/story.html

Jeremy

[J_E]

Too many batteries if you want any kind of range. The solution that is being experimented now is using a micro turbine to create a constant 200hp of charging (turbines are very efficient running at near full speed at their designed horsepower). Then hill climbing can use the battery pack also. Good Luck, TomC

Do you mean micro turbine as in a smaller jet engine, or micro turbine as in the micro wind/heat turbines?

[Iceni John]

I'm amazed nobody has covered an electric care in solar panels so that over a few days or weeks it could recharge itself.


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At most you could fit only a few hundred watts of PV on a car (and it would look mighty weird).   If you could shoehorn 370 watts of panels on, that's only half a horsepower, and that's ignoring efficiency losses and less-than-sunny days.   A fit cyclist can develop more than that.   My garbage disposer is more powerful than that.   Half a horsepower is not even enough to power the car's A/C.   Maybe you could run the windshield wipers on that much power, but if it were raining you wouldn't be producing any PV power anyway.

If it takes days or weeks to recharge an electric car from solar, then that kinda makes the car completely bloody useless for all the time it's sitting there quietly absorbing its fill of electrons.   Perhaps one could temporarily repurpose it as a chicken coop or a dog kennel or something else, but as a car it would be a non-starter, literally.

I've had folk look at the two thousand watts of panels on the roof of my bus and they ask me "So now you can power the bus just from solar?"   They seem genuinely surprised when I tell them that it doesn't quite work that way.   With all the power I have, it's still only the equivalent of less than three horsepower.   My MT42 starter motor is several times more powerful than that.

John

[Zephod]

At most you could fit only a few hundred watts of PV on a car (and it would look mighty weird).   If you could shoehorn 370 watts of panels on, that's only half a horsepower, and that's ignoring efficiency losses and less-than-sunny days.   A fit cyclist can develop more than that.   My garbage disposer is more powerful than that.   Half a horsepower is not even enough to power the car's A/C.   Maybe you could run the windshield wipers on that much power, but if it were raining you wouldn't be producing any PV power anyway.

If it takes days or weeks to recharge an electric car from solar, then that kinda makes the car completely bloody useless for all the time it's sitting there quietly absorbing its fill of electrons.   Perhaps one could temporarily repurpose it as a chicken coop or a dog kennel or something else, but as a car it would be a non-starter, literally.

I've had folk look at the two thousand watts of panels on the roof of my bus and they ask me "So now you can power the bus just from solar?"   They seem genuinely surprised when I tell them that it doesn't quite work that way.   With all the power I have, it's still only the equivalent of less than three horsepower.   My MT42 starter motor is several times more powerful than that.

John

I think you're a little harsh on solar power. Even a little solar panel adds some charge. Even if it adds only a couple of miles to the Daily range, it's still worth doing.


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