I ride on an electric bus a few times a week..
US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel
21–30 of 292 posts
Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel
#22I believe batteries and electric motors can replace almost all applications of gas engines. However, diesel engines still are a step too far now IMO. Most people have never operated a diesel engine. Their efficiency is very impressive. My 7,000 lbs truck with a Cummins diesel engine gets better MPGs than my partner's 4,000 lbs Mini Cooper Countryman.
> Most people have never operated a diesel engine. Their efficiency is very impressive.
All else equal (vehicle class, size, performance, driving style), the operating cost per mile of an EV is 1/4 to 1/2 the operating cost per mile of a diesel or gasoline vehicle, even in states with very expensive electricity like California or Hawaii.
Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
While not ideal, the alternative is kids continuing to sit in buses that idle for long periods of time slowly leaking diesel exhaust into the cabin area (at least that was the case with the Bluebird models I rode as a kid), that can't be good.
Yea, here the batteries catch fire and a bunch of kids burn to death. Grim, but possible.
Not likely, not without being in a serious accident. Despite the Chevy Bolt's highly publicized battery fires (which did not kill anyone), EV batteries don't usually burst into flames unprovoked. The battery will be well protected in a school bus frame.
Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel
#24Hmm...buses that (per the article) cost 2x or 3x what diesel ones would. From a company that's raising a whole lotta $$$ from VC's. And (plausibly) school districts will get rid of their old diesel bus fleets when they switch over... Is anyone else suspecting an "of course we'll loose money like crazy, until we hit 'em with the massive price increase" business model? EDIT: Wow, huge response. 3 points to add: - Yes,…
This is a fairly standard reframing when your product has lower TCO but higher upfront costs.
If people just look at the upfront cost, they have that 2x or 3x gut reaction and just switch off.
Some nerdier types might draw up a spreadsheet and know exactly how many months they'd expect to break even and start saving.
People familiar with spreadsheets probably also don't have that much trouble getting loans and paying them back on time, and doing even more sums to see if that makes financial sense.
But your average school bus buyer perhaps needs someone else to do all that for them, hedge the risk and present it to them as an immediate saving on their monthly spend.
People have sold rooftop solar this way, or replaced kerosene lamps in Africa with solar and batteries, and EVs Vs monthly Car payment plus fuel.
Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Frankly, if they rip off school districts in order to keep kids from inhaling nitrogen dioxide, that's still a better business model than most of the ones I've heard.
I think that depends on the extent to which they rip them off.
I guess you're probably right. But it seems like we're looking at a small factor (2-3) applied to the usual price of a school bus. Of course, there are also reasons it might not be a ripoff, as others brought up (lower ops costs, economy of scale). I just felt like highlighting the problems with prioritizing price over all else around the health of primary schoolchildren.
Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
While not ideal, the alternative is kids continuing to sit in buses that idle for long periods of time slowly leaking diesel exhaust into the cabin area (at least that was the case with the Bluebird models I rode as a kid), that can't be good.
Yea, here the batteries catch fire and a bunch of kids burn to death. Grim, but possible.
ICE vehicles have orders of magnitude higher fire risk than EV.
https://www.kbb.com/car-news/study-electric-vehicles-involve...
Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "subscribed" buses will be privately owned and operated, they'll be increasingly filled with advertising and other predatory bullshit for exploiting the passengers.
I think that's pretty unlikely, at least with schoolbuses. The US has laws around child privacy and advertising that companies easily flaunt online, but are much more difficult to flaunt when your product is a physical bus. OTOH, I would not be surprised to see these buses rusting in a storage lot within a decade because these firms have closed up shop and some random server somewhere is no longer responding to reque…
In the '90s the dairy industry managed to get "got milk" posters into approximately every US elementary school.
Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel
#28Hmm...buses that (per the article) cost 2x or 3x what diesel ones would. From a company that's raising a whole lotta $$$ from VC's. And (plausibly) school districts will get rid of their old diesel bus fleets when they switch over... Is anyone else suspecting an "of course we'll loose money like crazy, until we hit 'em with the massive price increase" business model? EDIT: Wow, huge response. 3 points to add: - Yes,…
The play is in vehicle-to-grid (V2G) electric price arbitrage, the article even mentions that a full third of the revenue from the program is coming from selling V2G power generation back to the grid.
Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel
#29Hmm...buses that (per the article) cost 2x or 3x what diesel ones would. From a company that's raising a whole lotta $$$ from VC's. And (plausibly) school districts will get rid of their old diesel bus fleets when they switch over... Is anyone else suspecting an "of course we'll loose money like crazy, until we hit 'em with the massive price increase" business model? EDIT: Wow, huge response. 3 points to add: - Yes,…
This is a fairly standard reframing when your product has lower TCO but higher upfront costs. If people just look at the upfront cost, they have that 2x or 3x gut reaction and just switch off. Some nerdier types might draw up a spreadsheet and know exactly how many months they'd expect to break even and start saving. People familiar with spreadsheets probably also don't have that much trouble getting loans and paying…
It's not just the cost over time, it's the availability of capital in large clumps - also known as "the cost of being poor:" It may be 5x cheaper in the long run to pay 3x the cost today, but if you don't have 3x the cost today, well, good luck.
Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel
#30Apparently there's an important patent on lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries that expires next month (on April 27th). I'm hoping that changes the economics on batteries and that LFPs become cheap and abundant, and widely available from a variety of manufacturers that aren't located in China.
LFP seems like the obvious choice for large vehicles like buses unless there's some reason to really need to optimize for range. In schoolbuses especially, it would be good to use a kind of battery that's much less likely to catch on fire.