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I think battery buses have comprehensively won this one, to be honest. The biggest hydrogen bus fleet seems to be 35 vehicles; there are many BEV bus fleets in

I think battery buses have comprehensively won this one, to be honest. The biggest hydrogen bus fleet seems to be 35 vehicles; there are many BEV bus fleets in the hundreds and some in the thousands. As a certified old person, I'm having trouble getting used to them. It is unnatural for a double-decker bus to pull up near-silently, and then move off smoothly when you get on. They are _supposed_ to vibrate violently and sound like they might explode at any moment; it's traditional. (One of the bus route closest to me has a mix of fancy BEV buses and ancient diesel things from 2007, so I get an interesting selection. The other is mostly plugin hybrids, which are extra-disconcerting, as they're either silent or very noisy depending on mode.)

dugditches 2y ago
>Regionalverkehr Köln (RVK) has become the largest operator of hydrogen fuel cell buses in Europe, with a fleet that reached 101 vehicles by late 2024 and is expected to grow to 160 by the end of 2025. I mean, right from the second section of the article.
api 2y ago
Where I live in the US my kids still take “cheese buses” to school that haven’t changed a bit. They’re diesel and you can hear them blocks away. When they pull up with their air brakes going off and their diesel shifting to idle it sounds like one of those spice miner things from Dune going to work. If they ever go electric I’m not sure how we’ll know it’s time to take the kids out. Won’t be able to hear them coming.
- sightbroke 2y ago
  > If they ever go electric I’m not sure how we’ll know it’s time to take the kids out. Won’t be able to hear them coming. I'm sure they'll just have an app.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
    How about playing a ditty just like an ice cream truck?
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  My school district has some that are electric and they are quite noisy also. sounds like gear noise mainly, so they must have a reduction gear or some sort of transmission. They also still have air brakes so you hear the compressor and the PSSSSHT of air when they stop.
  - Androider 2y ago
    It wasn't easy, but the bus company managed to make their EV leak oil and need gear maintenance.
- deepsun 2y ago
  You'll see the bus on your phone / home hub. Like ridezoom company does, you see whenever your kid checked in/out of the bus, and the bus itself on a map.
  - linedgolyi 2y ago
    Hopefully in a way not tied to some commercial third party. People should be able to reliably go to public school without having to accept an arbitrary third party contract
    - deepsun 2y ago
      Oh don't worry, you won't even get asked. It's your school district decides to pay a lot of your tax dollars to the third-party company.
- Angostura 2y ago
  They’ll simply use ice-cream van style chimes :)
- linedgolyi 2y ago
  There's a similar danger with very quiet and/or electric cars where people near the school barely hear them coming and need more attention to keep themselves safe. Avoiding an older gas or diesel car is practically automatic as you can hear their speed, acceleration and location comparatively far away. I think EV manufacturers have added some sort of noise to low speed driving, but I haven't heard anything beyond one being right behind me
  - CraigJPerry 2y ago
    I thought they all had AVAS fitted? Are there markets where this isn’t the case?
    - linedgolyi 2y ago
      Maybe? Problem is either that it can be and is always disabled by driver, or it's very quiet, because I as a healthy man in their 20s, hear the pavement tire noise before any other noise, and the car is already really close at that point
      - CraigJPerry 2y ago
        In the EU and UK markets we don’t have an option to disable the AVAS noise generator. It self disables above something like 10kmh when, as you say, tyre roar is the predominant sound a car makes (unless someone is revving the engine I suppose).
      - fluidcruft 2y ago
        Most pedestrians have airpods in nowadays and probably couldn't hear an ambulance.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - amarcheschi 2y ago
    I had a silent moped and I had to pass near a school when kids finished school to get to university. It was absolutely dangerous if I was going at a sane speed (less than the limit). I learnt to get very slow before approaching that
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
I'm surprised hybrids are so under-represented in this considerations. Maybe I'm missing something but I would think at the scale of a bus, a hybrid is even more appealing than at the scale of a sedan. Even locomotives and one or two earthmoving off-highway trucks have electric transmissions, making them series hybrids (With very small batteries not used for traction)
- m463 2y ago
  I wonder if diesel electric locomotives are efficient at all. I think the electric is for infinite torque to get lots and lots of cars moving. But to slow down, "electric" brakes are to bleed off power into resistor banks, not re-capture the electricity. Meanwhile an electric bus actually has to be efficient, which means batteries and regenerative braking.
  - hakfoo 2y ago
    As I understand it, straight electric locomotives would use the 'dynamic' braking to send current back up the wires. Apparently this would make for entertaining economics-- a section of the rail network where most of the tonnage went downhill could produce a net negative power bill. With diesel-electrics, there was nowhere to the braking power, so resistor grids were the order of the day. I wonder if it would be possible or worthwhile to outfit them with battery tenders to recapture the current with modern batteries and power-management circuitry.
    - kalleboo 2y ago
      An example of such a line is in Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ore_Line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ore_Line > From Riksgränsen on the national border to the Port of Narvik, the trains use only a fifth of the power they regenerate. The regenerated energy is sufficient to power the empty trains back up to the national border.
      - rstuart4133 2y ago
mmooss 2y ago
> The biggest hydrogen bus fleet seems to be 35 vehicles From the OP: Cologne is one of the few relatively good news stories for hydrogen bus fleets. Regionalverkehr Köln (RVK) has become the largest operator of hydrogen fuel cell buses in Europe, with a fleet that reached 101 vehicles by late 2024 and is expected to grow to 160 by the end of 2025.
- spacebanana7 2y ago
  Still, their point was directionally correct. London has 1397 electric buses and Moscow has over 2300. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_emission_buses_in_London https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_emission_buses_in_London https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_buses_in_Moscow https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_buses_in_Moscow
  - mmooss 2y ago
    Nobody doubts EVs are more popular now. You should see the numbers for ICE buses too. The discussion is about the future.
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      Do you expect any problem to appear for batteries at the next century or so? What king of change do you expect on the future for it to not repeat the lessons we learned at the present? Fossil fuels are on the way out because we do expect problems. Do you have something similar for EVs?
      - mmooss 2y ago
        Efficiency is always a problem. EVs wouldn't exist if they weren't more efficient than ICE vehicles, but there is still a cost to EVs - power generation, manufacturing, waste .... A new technology could increase efficiency.
  - kleiba 2y ago
    Germany has this recurring fixation on hydrogen for whatever reason. Even when Tesla had already long hit the mainstream market, German car manufacturers were still arguing against EVs in favor for hydrogen-powered cars that would theoretically be vastly superior. Well, we all know how that turned out for Mercedes, BMW, and the so on.

dugditches 2y ago

>Regionalverkehr Köln (RVK) has become the largest operator of hydrogen fuel cell buses in Europe, with a fleet that reached 101 vehicles by late 2024 and is expected to grow to 160 by the end of 2025. I mean, right from the second section of the article.

api 2y ago

Where I live in the US my kids still take “cheese buses” to school that haven’t changed a bit. They’re diesel and you can hear them blocks away. When they pull up with their air brakes going off and their diesel shifting to idle it sounds like one of those spice miner things from Dune going to work. If they ever go electric I’m not sure how we’ll know it’s time to take the kids out. Won’t be able to hear them coming.

sightbroke 2y ago
> If they ever go electric I’m not sure how we’ll know it’s time to take the kids out. Won’t be able to hear them coming. I'm sure they'll just have an app.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
  How about playing a ditty just like an ice cream truck?
SoftTalker 2y ago
My school district has some that are electric and they are quite noisy also. sounds like gear noise mainly, so they must have a reduction gear or some sort of transmission. They also still have air brakes so you hear the compressor and the PSSSSHT of air when they stop.
- Androider 2y ago
  It wasn't easy, but the bus company managed to make their EV leak oil and need gear maintenance.
deepsun 2y ago
You'll see the bus on your phone / home hub. Like ridezoom company does, you see whenever your kid checked in/out of the bus, and the bus itself on a map.
- linedgolyi 2y ago
  Hopefully in a way not tied to some commercial third party. People should be able to reliably go to public school without having to accept an arbitrary third party contract
  - deepsun 2y ago
    Oh don't worry, you won't even get asked. It's your school district decides to pay a lot of your tax dollars to the third-party company.
Angostura 2y ago
They’ll simply use ice-cream van style chimes :)
linedgolyi 2y ago
There's a similar danger with very quiet and/or electric cars where people near the school barely hear them coming and need more attention to keep themselves safe. Avoiding an older gas or diesel car is practically automatic as you can hear their speed, acceleration and location comparatively far away. I think EV manufacturers have added some sort of noise to low speed driving, but I haven't heard anything beyond one being right behind me
- CraigJPerry 2y ago
  I thought they all had AVAS fitted? Are there markets where this isn’t the case?
  - linedgolyi 2y ago
    Maybe? Problem is either that it can be and is always disabled by driver, or it's very quiet, because I as a healthy man in their 20s, hear the pavement tire noise before any other noise, and the car is already really close at that point
    - CraigJPerry 2y ago
      In the EU and UK markets we don’t have an option to disable the AVAS noise generator. It self disables above something like 10kmh when, as you say, tyre roar is the predominant sound a car makes (unless someone is revving the engine I suppose).
    - fluidcruft 2y ago
      Most pedestrians have airpods in nowadays and probably couldn't hear an ambulance.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- amarcheschi 2y ago
  I had a silent moped and I had to pass near a school when kids finished school to get to university. It was absolutely dangerous if I was going at a sane speed (less than the limit). I learnt to get very slow before approaching that

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago

I'm surprised hybrids are so under-represented in this considerations. Maybe I'm missing something but I would think at the scale of a bus, a hybrid is even more appealing than at the scale of a sedan. Even locomotives and one or two earthmoving off-highway trucks have electric transmissions, making them series hybrids (With very small batteries not used for traction)

m463 2y ago
I wonder if diesel electric locomotives are efficient at all. I think the electric is for infinite torque to get lots and lots of cars moving. But to slow down, "electric" brakes are to bleed off power into resistor banks, not re-capture the electricity. Meanwhile an electric bus actually has to be efficient, which means batteries and regenerative braking.
- hakfoo 2y ago
  As I understand it, straight electric locomotives would use the 'dynamic' braking to send current back up the wires. Apparently this would make for entertaining economics-- a section of the rail network where most of the tonnage went downhill could produce a net negative power bill. With diesel-electrics, there was nowhere to the braking power, so resistor grids were the order of the day. I wonder if it would be possible or worthwhile to outfit them with battery tenders to recapture the current with modern batteries and power-management circuitry.
  - kalleboo 2y ago
    An example of such a line is in Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ore_Line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ore_Line > From Riksgränsen on the national border to the Port of Narvik, the trains use only a fifth of the power they regenerate. The regenerated energy is sufficient to power the empty trains back up to the national border.
    - rstuart4133 2y ago

mmooss 2y ago

> The biggest hydrogen bus fleet seems to be 35 vehicles From the OP: Cologne is one of the few relatively good news stories for hydrogen bus fleets. Regionalverkehr Köln (RVK) has become the largest operator of hydrogen fuel cell buses in Europe, with a fleet that reached 101 vehicles by late 2024 and is expected to grow to 160 by the end of 2025.

spacebanana7 2y ago
Still, their point was directionally correct. London has 1397 electric buses and Moscow has over 2300. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_emission_buses_in_London https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_emission_buses_in_London https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_buses_in_Moscow https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_buses_in_Moscow
- mmooss 2y ago
  Nobody doubts EVs are more popular now. You should see the numbers for ICE buses too. The discussion is about the future.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    Do you expect any problem to appear for batteries at the next century or so? What king of change do you expect on the future for it to not repeat the lessons we learned at the present? Fossil fuels are on the way out because we do expect problems. Do you have something similar for EVs?
    - mmooss 2y ago
      Efficiency is always a problem. EVs wouldn't exist if they weren't more efficient than ICE vehicles, but there is still a cost to EVs - power generation, manufacturing, waste .... A new technology could increase efficiency.
- kleiba 2y ago
  Germany has this recurring fixation on hydrogen for whatever reason. Even when Tesla had already long hit the mainstream market, German car manufacturers were still arguing against EVs in favor for hydrogen-powered cars that would theoretically be vastly superior. Well, we all know how that turned out for Mercedes, BMW, and the so on.