6 ms·

Pure second-hand anecdote, but my father is in management at our local regional transportation company (covers buses, lightrail, and more). We're not a small ci

by Alupis 7y ago

Pure second-hand anecdote, but my father is in management at our local regional transportation company (covers buses, lightrail, and more). We're not a small city. They're experimenting with an electric bus right now - but so far it's been a nightmare. Range is the primary problem, lasting less than a full route, sometimes not even lasting over an hour after a full charge. This has resulted in having to tow the bus back to the shop several times. Even with removable batteries, you'd have to have a lot of these lying around, and a lot more buses running shorter routes, to compensate. Their CNG buses just don't have this problem, and produce largely water vapor as their combustion bi-product.

r00fus 7y ago
Which vendor is supplying those buses? Sounds like your unit may be malfunctioning if that's nowhere near spec, or you have extreme weather conditions.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Alupis 7y ago
  The vendor is GreenPower Motor Co. Inc.'s EV Star mini-buses. They bought 6 of them for testing. I think the problem is the terrain, distance in the routes, and expected load. "Out of the box" it looks like they're capable of 100-150 miles, but from what he said, they weren't getting those numbers even on a good day. From that experience, and from his attitude towards them. I doubt they'll be eager to try out the full sized versions. The CNG buses they currently run are pretty darn clean, and cheap to operate as it is. So electric will have to be quite a bit better in order to convince them to switch.
  - dzhiurgis 7y ago
    Wait what. They bought 6 of them before doing a test ride???
    - Alupis 7y ago
      I don't have insight to the testing process, but ya, I assume they drove one around before buying 6 of them... It's like the difference between using the trial period for some new SaaS product, vs. actually buying it and putting it into limited production - you'll find all sorts of things you didn't run into before. You must also consider the scale they operate at - buying 6 for testing probably isn't too big of a deal if they don't work out long term.
    - 0xffff2 7y ago
      Why not? "not a small city" probably means their overall inventory is on the order of dozens or hundreds of buses.
dheera 7y ago
Almost all EV and electric mobility range numbers are pure bulls*it. Scooters with 40 miles range? You'll get 15 miles at best. They measure those doing laps on tracks. I can't imagine how absurdly mindbogglingly braindead they must be to think doing laps around a track is anything representative of the real world. Do the company execs spend all their day in the office, and have never in their life ever seen a hill or traffic light before?
- mschuster91 7y ago
  The thing is you want ranges to be reproducible for comparisons, and for that you need a standardized environment - temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind speed, driving profile. The easiest way to do this is on a track or on a rig.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    Two things I can add to this. Routes and service varies a lot from one fleet to another and route to another. That effects the type of bus you want. Maybe you have a school bus in San Diego. Drives flat and a couple of hours day. Or maybe it's bus in the Sierras and has to climb 2500 feet up a steep grade in 100 degree weather at 7000 feet. The other thing I think is routes are currently designed around diesel buses. Natively replacing them with electric is likely to be sub optimal.
  - dheera 7y ago
    Yeah but when you then go and sell it to the customer as a "scooter with 40 mile range" this is extremely deceptive and disingenuous as you KNOW the customer isn't going to be running their scooter around a track, they probably are going to be using it to commute around town with stoplights and hills. Yes, it depends on a lot of factors, but stoplights exist almost everywhere and should be considered standard; if that halves your range to 20 miles, you should probably advertise it as "10-20 miles range depending on terrain" instead of "40 miles". A standardized environment for testing is fine but it should emulate some set of realistic conditions if you intend to use numbers from it for advertising, e.g. stop-and-go every 100 meters, uphill 2% for 1/3, 0% for 1/3, downhill -2% for 1/3, or something like that.

by Alupis 7y ago

r00fus 7y ago

Which vendor is supplying those buses? Sounds like your unit may be malfunctioning if that's nowhere near spec, or you have extreme weather conditions.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Alupis 7y ago
The vendor is GreenPower Motor Co. Inc.'s EV Star mini-buses. They bought 6 of them for testing. I think the problem is the terrain, distance in the routes, and expected load. "Out of the box" it looks like they're capable of 100-150 miles, but from what he said, they weren't getting those numbers even on a good day. From that experience, and from his attitude towards them. I doubt they'll be eager to try out the full sized versions. The CNG buses they currently run are pretty darn clean, and cheap to operate as it is. So electric will have to be quite a bit better in order to convince them to switch.
- dzhiurgis 7y ago
  Wait what. They bought 6 of them before doing a test ride???
  - Alupis 7y ago
    I don't have insight to the testing process, but ya, I assume they drove one around before buying 6 of them... It's like the difference between using the trial period for some new SaaS product, vs. actually buying it and putting it into limited production - you'll find all sorts of things you didn't run into before. You must also consider the scale they operate at - buying 6 for testing probably isn't too big of a deal if they don't work out long term.
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    Why not? "not a small city" probably means their overall inventory is on the order of dozens or hundreds of buses.

dheera 7y ago

Almost all EV and electric mobility range numbers are pure bulls*it. Scooters with 40 miles range? You'll get 15 miles at best. They measure those doing laps on tracks. I can't imagine how absurdly mindbogglingly braindead they must be to think doing laps around a track is anything representative of the real world. Do the company execs spend all their day in the office, and have never in their life ever seen a hill or traffic light before?

mschuster91 7y ago
The thing is you want ranges to be reproducible for comparisons, and for that you need a standardized environment - temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind speed, driving profile. The easiest way to do this is on a track or on a rig.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  Two things I can add to this. Routes and service varies a lot from one fleet to another and route to another. That effects the type of bus you want. Maybe you have a school bus in San Diego. Drives flat and a couple of hours day. Or maybe it's bus in the Sierras and has to climb 2500 feet up a steep grade in 100 degree weather at 7000 feet. The other thing I think is routes are currently designed around diesel buses. Natively replacing them with electric is likely to be sub optimal.
- dheera 7y ago
  Yeah but when you then go and sell it to the customer as a "scooter with 40 mile range" this is extremely deceptive and disingenuous as you KNOW the customer isn't going to be running their scooter around a track, they probably are going to be using it to commute around town with stoplights and hills. Yes, it depends on a lot of factors, but stoplights exist almost everywhere and should be considered standard; if that halves your range to 20 miles, you should probably advertise it as "10-20 miles range depending on terrain" instead of "40 miles". A standardized environment for testing is fine but it should emulate some set of realistic conditions if you intend to use numbers from it for advertising, e.g. stop-and-go every 100 meters, uphill 2% for 1/3, 0% for 1/3, downhill -2% for 1/3, or something like that.