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US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel

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Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel

#171

Post by MathCodeLove »

freeflight wrote: post #146
daemoens wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll slam into the seats and still be safer.

YouTube has plenty of videos showing the insides of school buses during crashes, anything that ain't a frontal crash has kids sliding and flying all over the place. They slide sideways out of the seats trough any serious horizontal forces, in the case of a rollover their heads will violently hit the roof as they literally take off from the seats [0], and then fall on the people on the ground side. [0] https://youtu.b…

YouTube also has plenty of videos of plane crashes, that doesn't mean that passenger aircraft are inherently unsafe, but that there are always risks associated with transportation and given extraordinary enough circumstances those risks will be revealed.

Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel

#172

Post by Barrin92 »

mtgx wrote: post #130
MengerSponge wrote: post #77

The secondary costs of running a diesel fleet are also huge! Diesel motors generate a substantial amount of fine particulate that is unhealthy for anybody, and particularly unhealthy for children. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC121970/ Even if an electric fleet is the same cost, changing over would save tons of money and alleviate tons of suffering. It's the right thing to do for any ethical reason you…

> Diesel motors generate a substantial amount of fine particulate that is unhealthy for anybody, and particularly unhealthy for children. This is one of the biggest issues with US' private healthcare system. The U.S. government just doesn't feel that direct "cost" in the same way countries that have to pay to fix the health of their citizens do. This is why you see a lot of other countries put higher taxes on sugar,…

Very true and also the reason for the exploding costs of the education system people complain about. In countries where universities run on public budgets you won't see exploding administrations and degree inflation because the state has a direct incentive to keep costs low rather than handing out loans that go to private institutions.

Was honestly surprised when I saw that the rate of university graduation in the US is twice as high as it is here in Germany.

Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel

#173

Post by mleonhard »

Zum is an electric schoolbus provider mentioned in the article. Their headquarters in near SF, in Redwood City. They're hiring engineers:

https://www.ridezum.com/corporate-hq-hiring.html

It looks like they're modernizing the whole student transportation process: apps for parents/drivers/school admins, dynamic routing, monitoring, and metrics. They claim 20% reduction in student commute times. That's a big quality of life improvement.

I think the job would be quite interesting: geo, real-time, mobile, web, embedded, physical infrastructure, optimization, diverse user base, and many human factors. They're well-funded so probably pay decently.

The office photos show a large open plan, which could be an acoustic hellscape, like Google SF Spear St. If the space has enough sound-absorbing panels and dividers and quiet floors then it could be ok. Can any of you comment on the work environment?

Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel

#174

Post by ajford »

wongarsu wrote: post #165
ajford wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cold air impacting heath & capacity on the Li batteries, perhaps? Lithium batts tend to be finicky about their temperatures. Even my PHEV chevy volt de-rates the capacity if the ambient air temps hit less than 36*F.

Heating the batteries and passenger compartment is quite expensive energy-wise, you certainly have to calculate that in when determining an appropriate battery size for such an application.

Definitely something to consider. I wonder if there's some value to a secondary/supplemental seasonal battery that can be added for part of the year to handle the extra load.

Would come down to whether the installation/removal (to lower the "dry" weight for the warm seasons) would be worth the energy savings of not hauling around the supplemental battery weight.

Other options might be to use some kind of thermal mass for heating, perhaps a large heated mass or fluid tank? Not sure if there's any benefit there though beyond being able to swap out the fluid tank between runs faster than charging a battery.

Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel

#175

Post by Mountain_Skies »

mywittyname wrote: post #135
anonymouse008 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and school's budgets are cash tight, with comparatively little ability to fundraise, so any large cash transaction will be DOA. The swap should take place, and I'm now wondering why this hasn't occurred.

Schools often issue bonds to cover large purchases. Plus, sometimes states/fed will toss them grants.

It's interesting to see how different bond proposals are received by the public. In the more conservative areas I've lived, adding a penny to the sales tax to fund school bonds is pretty much always approved by the voters and renewals are likewise rubberstamped. In liberal areas, that's a much more difficult tax to get passed, mainly on the grounds that it is regressive. School bonds secured with increased property taxes tend to work in the reverse, with property tax increases being popular in liberal areas but opposed in conservative ones.

Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel

#176

Post by thethethethe »

adamc wrote: post #162
thethethethe wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would significantly expand taxes How exactly? Do you have any examples? Also, have you ever seen the price of car infrastructure? I would be willing to bet that denser walkable urban infrastructure projects are waaaaay cheaper than building and maintaining sprawling road, sewage, and power transmission networks. Sprawl is seriously draining the finances of many small cities and towns in the US. There's a whole b…

Yeah, but it's not terribly likely that you could stop maintaining the sprawl, because it's already there. Certainly not quickly.

Yeah they are going to raise taxes to pay for it because that's all they can do. Which is the opposite of what OP said

Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel

#177

Post by throwaway0a5e »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #169
fiftyfifty wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in terms of primary cost, diesel buses are expensive to maintain. My FIL was a mechanic for the local school district for 15 years, so I got a little insight into that aspect of the district. Our medium sized school district, 4 big high schools and all the feeder schools for them, employs around 6 full time mechanics plus their manager with all the equipment and the facility to work on the buses year round plus…

> diesel buses breakdown regularly In comparison to what? Diesel engines in commercial vehicles are extremely reliable. It certainly could be possible for an electric bus to be more reliable, they certainly have less points of mechanical wear. However, there are a lot of power electronics going into charging their batteries and delivering the battery power to the motors.

He probably lived through the "Maxfarce" era in which the Navistar MaxForce diesels that everyone and their brother ran proved to be less reliable than the International 7.3 IDIs they were replacing. To be clear, they weren't unreliable, they just had a tough act to follow.

Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel

#178

Post by throwaway0a5e »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #24
bell-cot wrote: post #2

Hmm...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…

School buses are bought by spreadsheet literate people. Understanding lifetime cost is a job requirement of the kind of people who run bus fleets and most people are qualified to do their jobs and do them satisfactorily.

This isn't a case where a good product isn't succeeding because "hurr durr the public is dumb". People have run the numbers. It just doesn't work, yet.

Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel

#179

Post by bsdetector »

kemiller wrote: post #119
jjtheblunt wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Disclaimer: have driven pure electric for going on 7.5 years) It may be more complex: electricity generation is very dirty in some regions, such as where coal is burned. Is it more dirty than diesel emissions? I have no idea, but old diesels were nasty.

Engineering Explained did the math: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RhtiPefVzM Spoiler: Well-to-wheels, BEV cars are better than the best gas cars (top end prius) even if the source electricity is 100% coal. The best is still not driving, but it's a step in the right direction.

This video is actually a great example of how smart people can fool themselves.

The sources he uses for breakeven time (DOE) assumes 24.3 mpg [1] for the average regular car, but people don't drive average cars they drive specific cars.

If you take the DOE assumptions and approach this from the other end, CO2 pollution by mpg, then you find an ICE car getting approx 30 mpg or more is less polluting per mile driven than an EV powered entirely by coal, and one getting >45 mpg is less polluting than an EV powered by natural gas. This does not include the battery at all, which makes sense as it is an independent consideration.

This is a more honest way to present the information so individuals can make informed decisions for themselves among potential car purchases and so that people aren't fooled into thinking that all EVs are less polluting in all circumstances.

1 - https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions_sources....

Re: US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel

#180

Post by dijonman2 »

mywittyname wrote: post #134
cpwright wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you would assume that the average school bus buyer can't do a spreadsheet. Our local suburban NY school district is fairly run-of-the mill, and has a budget of $84 million with several million dollars of that being for transportation. We have our own busses and drivers, and they spend about a quarter million dollars a year on diesel fuel. The Superintendent for business affairs that has an MBA from C…

As much flak as people give "the government" for poor spending, there's actually a huge amount of auditing and checks in place for purchases by officials. There's no way a decision like this gets made without a several "independent assessments" happening as a CYA move.

The administration of the Roslyn school district ripped off tax payers for years. While it was caught it took awhile to discover:

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/09/hugh-jackman-mo...

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