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China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

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Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#161

Post by Reason077 »

ollie87 wrote: post #157
Xylakant wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trolleybusses are electric, they just get their electricity from overhead wires, similar to a railway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus

They are but they need more infrastructure than battery vehicles.

Exactly. The high cost, inflexibility, and maintenance requirements of overhead wires all make them unattractive for new installations.

Battery electric buses, on the other hand, can operate anywhere that diesel buses can, and a fault with one bus or one section of wire will not break the whole route.

Many cities also consider overhead wires to be visually unattractive. Birmingham's new tram network is being built to use overhead wires on suburban tracks, but switch to battery power in the city centre to avoid having to install overhead wires there.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#162

Post by agsdfgsd »

ollie87 wrote: post #157
Xylakant wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trolleybusses are electric, they just get their electricity from overhead wires, similar to a railway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus

They are but they need more infrastructure than battery vehicles.

Are a few overhead wires actually more expensive than the massive batteries electric buses require? They are certainly less damaging to the environment.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#163

Post by village-idiot »

paganel wrote: post #85

Why don't we bring trolleybuses back? They rock! You don't need polluting batteries in order to run them, just some copper to put the wires up, and we've been master of this "technology" for almost a century now. Also, we should extend or re-introduce the tram network.

This is easy.

Diesel buses were more cost effective than electric trolleys, which is why they replaced all the trolleys with diesel buses.

Electric (battery) buses are expected to be more cost effective than the diesel buses they’re replacing.

Thanks to the transitive property of inequality, we would expect electric buses to be more cost effective than electric trolleys.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#164

Post by cmrdporcupine »

davedx wrote: post #35
marvin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That type of taxation of externalities is really a no-brainer in the West too, but there’s just not democratic majority for implementing it. A tragedy. Tragedy of the commons, really, on a spectacular scale. A general CO2 tax wouldn’t be hard to implement if we were a dictatorship.

In the Netherlands they’ve just reversed subsidies for electric vehicles, increasing bijtelling for them which makes them a lot more expensive for business purchases and leases. It’s a step backwards.

Same in Ontario, our generous EV subsidy was killed by the new right-wing-populist provincial gov't, cap'n'trade eliminated (leaving a $3b hole in the budget), and various green programmes turfed.

Then they had the gall to turn around and promote the fact that Ontario has dropped its CO2 emissions by 25% in the last 10 years. All due to the actions of the previous government that they railed against with "lock her up" type chants.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#165

Post by dsfyu404ed »

agsdfgsd wrote: post #162
ollie87 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are but they need more infrastructure than battery vehicles.

Are a few overhead wires actually more expensive than the massive batteries electric buses require? They are certainly less damaging to the environment.

Batteries are a commodity. Production can get outsourced to whoever can deliver the best value. Up front costs are smaller and you never have to worry about infrastructure upgrades because there's no special infrastructure. You can just replace your diesel buses with electric as they come due. You automatically get upgrades buses every few years because buses don't last 40+ like trains do and you aren't ever forced to upgrade your overhead electric infrastructure

The wires are planned and owned by an (intentionally) inefficient government bureaucracy and installed and maintained by expensive local labor and you can't just change routes on a whim, you may be forced to do a full system upgrade in the future, etc, etc.

In somewhere like China where the government can just tell people where the trams are going to be and that's that the wires are probably the better solution in more cases. In the west where have to work with the public to get their approval for infrastructure it's generally a better all around solution to buy electric buses to replace your diesel ones even if it is less environmentally efficient on paper.

Edit: Some of you are appear to be taking my factual statement about the efficiency of government poorly. The inefficiency of government is a feature, not a bug. Government that can do good things (like install wires for trams) quickly and fairly unilaterally can also do bad things (like waste money installing wires for trams where nobody wants them) fairly unilaterally. You can't have it both ways and sometimes you just have to work around the system and if that means buying the buses with batteries then that's fine.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#166

Post by cmrdporcupine »

moduspol wrote: post #154
marvin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That type of taxation of externalities is really a no-brainer in the West too, but there’s just not democratic majority for implementing it. A tragedy. Tragedy of the commons, really, on a spectacular scale. A general CO2 tax wouldn’t be hard to implement if we were a dictatorship.

Why stop at a CO2 tax? All kinds of problems could be solved with a dictatorship.

It's not having a dictatorship -- it's having a national economic strategy and a popular will to make decisions without letting very particular selfish interests get in the way.

It does not require an authoritarian central leadership.

But it does require stopping and rolling back the capture of political bodies and the public sphere generally by private interests.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#167

Post by tasuki »

morsch wrote: post #153
ThePhysicist wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trolleybuses still require infrastructure wherever they run, hence in many cities in Europe they got replaced by trams as they seem to be more efficient (because they're much longer than a bus). In Berlin there are already electric buses in operation on several lines (manufactured by Solaris, a Polish company and EVO bus, a Mercedes Benz subsidiary) and they will start experimenting with inductive charging soon. The…

Inductive charging is only 90% efficient at best. Doesn't really matter for portable devices with their tiny batteries, but it seems wasteful for vehicles.

It could significantly reduce the required battery size though.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#168

Post by Reason077 »

agsdfgsd wrote: post #162
ollie87 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are but they need more infrastructure than battery vehicles.

Are a few overhead wires actually more expensive than the massive batteries electric buses require? They are certainly less damaging to the environment.

If building a new network from scratch or replacing diesel, then yes, there is no doubt that battery electrics are cheaper. Also, batteries are charged overnight, allowing cheap off-peak energy to be used.

The argument about batteries being damaging to the environment mostly relates to cobalt mining. However, buses typically use iron-phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries which contain no cobalt.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#169

Post by modzu »

paganel wrote: post #85

Why don't we bring trolleybuses back? They rock! You don't need polluting batteries in order to run them, just some copper to put the wires up, and we've been master of this "technology" for almost a century now. Also, we should extend or re-introduce the tram network.

we have them in Toronto!

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#170

Post by adrianN »

agsdfgsd wrote: post #162
ollie87 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are but they need more infrastructure than battery vehicles.

Are a few overhead wires actually more expensive than the massive batteries electric buses require? They are certainly less damaging to the environment.

It's not the wires that are expensive, is the bureaucracy required to do infrastructure work in a busy city.
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