Speaking of Green new deal and our buses

[richard5933]

I guess if your young and/or wealthy this is a non issue. But for the Joe six pack's or old retiree who love their old diesels which burn the most efficient and cheapest fuel to date just saying the future may not look to good for us. For you electric bus opponents how much will it cost you to plug in your bus after a 500 mile day running your electric a/c or electric heaters, electric frig, electric water heater, electric cook stove, etc not to mention pulling mountain passes and/or bucking a headwind are you going to be under 65' legal length in a lot of states pulling that battery trailer plus your towed vehicle? Maybe over 65' will be accepted if your all electric who knows.

Certainly won't cost any more to recharge the batteries after a 500-mile run than to refuel the diesel tank.

Batteries take up far less space than one might think - no need for pulling a trailer of bats behind.

Good thing is there will be early-adopters who blaze the trail and get the kinks worked out.

[tr206]

Like I said if your young and/or wealthy it's a non issue. I'm looking 10 years down the road not 50. I'm getting old. Not trying to pick a fight. Battle born wants $900.00 for one little battery right now for example. but your probably right but not in my life time. Plus I love the sound and smell of my two stroke detroit and diesels in general. Diesels bring us most everything we need today.

R.I.P Rush

[windtrader]

The issue is timing. Nearly all the current busnuts start with a bus that was in service and put to pasture, making it affordable for this bunch. Yes, some have factory conversions but they are certainly not anywhere new.
It is going to take time for electrical power on a bus scale to trickle down. Just a WAG (Wild @$# Guess), it'll be at least 10 years from now when the secondary markets start making available the new tech equipment at affordable busnut budgets.

[richard5933]

...Diesels bring us most everything we need today.

R.I.P Rush

I agree, but the question originally posed seemed to me about what comes next. Just trying to imagine how it might play out.

I'm thinking that things will roll much faster than any of us are ready for.

[tr206]

Sorry about the misconception. I'm talking about the war on fossil fuel we can't do without it right now. We are all going to pay a heavy price for this "green new deal" I busted @$# all my life and would like to enjoy my bus in my later years but I worry their going drive fuel prices out of my grasp just saying. By the way I too I,m from  Wisconsin.

[luvrbus]

 The electric buses I saw can recharge the battery on the roof in 10 mintues and go for another 10 miles 

[richard5933]

Sorry about the misconception. I'm talking about the war on fossil fuel we can't do without it right now. We are all going to pay a heavy price for this "green new deal" I busted @$# all my life and would like to enjoy my bus in my later years but I worry their going drive fuel prices out of my grasp just saying. By the way I too I,m from  Wisconsin.

I hear what you're saying, but the worry about fuel prices seems to come up every few years. Not too many years ago diesel was about $4/gal in many midwestern states, with fears of it going to $5 or more. Then it dropped down to almost $2, and that was before covid.

Yes, it's concerning. But I don't think that it's going to get crazy as long as there are commercial vehicles still dependent on diesel. With the shear number of trucks still being sold, and the pattern that (even in California) the laws to remove some vehicles from the roads usually play out over a couple of decades we don't have an immediate worry.

Enjoy your bus. My guess is that even with new tech coming online quickly we've got at least a couple of decades before the conversation will turn to getting vehicles like ours off the road. And then it will take a while longer to phase that in.

I'm actually hoping that some new tech starts to come on the scene sooner for people to start playing with, like it is with the hobby world of EV sports cars.

[tr206]

Yeah I know about fuel prices I drove truck for 35 years its your biggest overhead, remembering $5.25 per gallon fuel 200 gallons for $1050 buck and 5.2 mpg do the math on a 3000 mile trip about a buck a mile for fuel in the western states. I respect your desire for electric power but I think you been hanging around Madison to long. Just kidding. I think Texas would agree with me.   

[Nova Eona]

Interestingly, EVs may actually drive fuel prices down somewhat in the long run.  Two major reasons:

-Current fuel prices include a road tax.  As more and more of the vehicles on the road stop burning fuel, this tax will by necessity be reassessed and applied differently, probably in a mileage-per-year tax instead.

-As more EVs enter the market, the demand for diesel will drop - probably nothing dramatic, but that's the nature of a product as the supply/demand ratio shifts.  It's not like the oil companies are hurting for profits currently, they can survive a leaner seller's market for quite some time.

I'm confident it will be many years before anyone's actually trying to get ICE vehicles off the road entirely - the day to start worrying about that is the day you can no longer go out and pick up a brand new diesel powered class 8 truck.  Even then, it will be decades down the road - by the time legislation could be passed to really make the roads EV only, there will be so few ICE vehicles left (just hobbyists really) that no one will really bother.

[Fred Mc]

"It won't cost anything since electricity just comes out of the wall"
Im glad you finally realized that.Up here in B.C. where we have an abundance of hydro power the same clowns who are demanding electric vehicles are the same ones who want to stop completion of a 10 billion dollar hydro electric dam (1/2 the money has already been spent) So I guess its a good thing that power does come from a plug on the wall.

[luvrbus]

Solar farms here in the west are down right ugly laying in the valleys at the foot of the mountains.We have one close that covers 8000 acres that was a recreation area that i is built on federal land,20 acres you could build a power plant that would produce a 1000 times or more electricity per day than the solar on 8000 acres   

[richard5933]

Solar farms here in the west are down right ugly laying in the valleys at the foot of the mountains.We have one close that covers 8000 acres that was a recreation area that i is built on federal land,20 acres you could build a power plant that would produce a 1000 times or more electricity per day than the solar on 8000 acres

I understand what you're saying, but you're not saying the full story.

Just like people against EVs like to say that electricity doesn't magically come out of the wall, people who like traditional power plants seem to think that a power plant is the full impact.

Just how many mountains have to be removed from a mountain range to power that 20-acre power plant? Or how many oil wells need to be drilled in the Gulf? How many thousand of acres need to be dug up for coal or fracking sand? That 20 acres doesn't represent the total land use involved.

I'm not saying that any one of them in itself will end life as we know it. I'm just trying to point out that your 20-acre power plant has hidden behind it an equally large number of acres to power it.

The difference is that the windmills do far less permanent damage to those 8000 acres. Have you seen what a mountain looks like after a coal mine is done mining? https://appvoices.org/end-mountaintop-removal/mtr101/

[CrabbyMilton]

"It won't cost anything since electricity just comes out of the wall"
Im glad you finally realized that.Up here in B.C. where we have an abundance of hydro power the same clowns who are demanding electric vehicles are the same ones who want to stop completion of a 10 billion dollar hydro electric dam (1/2 the money has already been spent) So I guess its a good thing that power does come from a plug on the wall.

Obviously I was being sarcastic. But the EV zealots want to roll them out when they aren't proven just yet. Perhaps we would be further ahead if people weren't so fearful of nuclear power which is clean and yes safe. Wind and solar are just supplemental. As for buses, I have to wonder how the J4500 EV version will work on a long charter trip with the heat or AC going full blast depending on the region you are going thru. They ought to offer a small gasoline or diesel generator just in case. The EV school and transit buses may work for short trips around town but it's the longer distance trips that would concern me. The tour operator will have to plan carefully to make sure there are enough charging stations at the hotels. "Oh sorry it doesn't work but my cousin Floyd will pull you folks to the next town with his tractor."

[richard5933]

Obviously I was being sarcastic. But the EV zealots want to roll them out when they aren't proven just yet. Perhaps we would be further ahead if people weren't so fearful of nuclear power which is clean and yes safe.

I'd be all in on the nuclear power option if it weren't for the simple fact that when it fails (and it does) the amount of destruction that occurs is beyond catastrophic.

Compare the potential for disaster in the two options you mentioned - rolling out EVs before they're fully proven and nuclear power. If the EVs fail, even totally, the amount of subsequent damage can be handled and won't cause any long-lasting problems. Contrast that with the results of what happens when a nuclear facility has a problem - you don't have to look too far back in history, only a few years to Fukashima. If you want another example, go to Chernoble. Both situations will have long-lasting effects and danger. We narrowly escaped a similar situation at Three Mile Island, and I suspect that single event is what put the kibosh on the growth of nuclear power in the US.

Unfortunately there has not been the kind of advancements in nuclear power plant safety that are able to make enough people feel safe having new facilities built. Back in the 70s there was lots of talk of moving from nuclear fission to nuclear fusion, but I haven't heard much about this recently.

[tr206]

Richard I understand not against EV totally. We can go back and forth for hours. Energy is a necessary evil. In my travels I have seen hundreds of acres of windmills and solar farms scaring the land also to crude bubbling out of a road side ditch in Iraq. What about lithium mining for batteries? Its all ugly and dangerous but essential for us to live and thrive until someone develops that truly clean energy in all ways. Can we agree on that.