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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

#241

Post by Broken_Hippo »

fiftyfifty wrote: post #101
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…

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…

My father was a business manager for a few different school corporations. In at least one of them, the busses were all used - none were purchased new. It just wasn't worth it, and much cheaper to simply have an extra bus. You needed the mechanics regardless just to maintain them. You needed an extra driver anyway as well because people get sick. These aren't really the costs you are leading folks to believe they are, but part of overall cost savings.

One of the most wasteful (and expensive) things about school busses is that they are only used for school, which means they sit idle for much of the day. My father tried to work with at least one city to combine city busses with school busses - but state law (Indiana) forbid this since school busses were required by law to be the classic yellow with black markings.

I'll also add that outsourcing isn't without challenges, and the employees are often worse off. (I don't remember as many specifics right now: My father, who died 9 or 10 years ago, generally worked with custodial and cafeteria outsourcing.)

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

#242

Post by Broken_Hippo »

me_me_mu_mu wrote: post #205
lucastheisen wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is a reasonable walking distance? 9% seems like a surprisingly small number.

Just looked at CDC website it says fewer than 20%. Suburbs have been the only place where I’ve seen lots of yellow busses because everything is so spread out. Idk where that dude got his numbers, go to any city in the USA and you'll see kids taking public transit to school aka walking. https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2016/15_0573.htm#:~:text=Esti... .

Not every school system provides transportation, and when they do, some states (maybe all?) require that transportation be provided by a yellow school bus and not a city bus. (My father ran into this in Indiana).

I'm gonna guess that in at least some of these areas, they walk/take busses because the school system doesn't provide transportation.

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

#243

Post by Broken_Hippo »

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.

You don't need to heat the entire passenger compartment unless folks are in there, though. You just heat the bits that could benefit. This is the same sort of thinking behind the engine block heaters (for combustion engines) folks use when it is cold and a similar theory to trucks that heat their diesel tanks to keep the diesel from turning to gel, though I don't know if that's an issue anymore with modern diesel blends.

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

#244

Post by ZeroGravitas »

cpwright wrote: post #49
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

It was more a general point, and I did say 'perhaps', which was based on reading a headline that said "get EV busses for less than your monthly spend" rather than "EVs have lower TCO" which is the pitch I'd use for the more sophisticated buyer.

But maybe in this case, the buyer needs that sales pitch not for themselves but for the people who would be angry if they did something financially sensible with future payoff.

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

#245

Post by ZeroGravitas »

AnonCoward4 wrote: post #93
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I want to see that spreadsheet.

https://afdc.energy.gov/files/docs/vice-beb.xlsx

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

#246

Post by headmelted »

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.

Diesels, in general, are notoriously unreliable.

The only very selective myth I still hear repeated is that diesel engines are more durable now than they were, which isn’t saying much, and skirts around just how much else can and regularly does go wrong with a diesel-powered vehicle.

Flywheel clutches are an expensive nightmare, and the vibration destroys manifolds, cams and exhausts in short order.

That’s only for the dirtiest diesels that aren’t properly using DPFs or AdBlue (which if you’re seriously considering running school buses in 2022 and not using these, you’re a disgrace). Both of these fail regularly and cost a small fortune to replace.

There’s an entire underground industry dedicated to removing the particulate filters from Diesels to improve fuel economy and reliability (because I guess some people just hate kids, who knows?).

Electric vehicles have been around for well over a decade now, the data is back on them, and on the whole they are astonishingly reliable compared to the ICE vehicles they are replacing. There’s a lot of cables, sure, but they’re flexible and aren’t inherently moving parts.

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

#247

Post by watwut »

judge2020 wrote: post #213
mcv wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not driving would mean smaller schools closer to home, and infrastructure that allows kids to ride their bike to school. It's completely doable, but it does require people to care about more than just cars.

America is actively against letting your kid out of your sight, with the fear of bad actors perpetuated by primetime news channels being the driving factor. The advent of only needing to part with your child when you drop them off at school, or watch them get on the bus, provides a framework for chain-of-custody and accountability if anything were to happen to the child. Unless you still allow car access for the pare…

A school being a mile away with safe sidewalk tend to convince people the kid can go alone sooner.

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

#248

Post by stephen999 »

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,…

Huh? Most of Europe has socialized medicine and they have a ton more diesels and thus air pollution than the US.

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

#249

Post by stephen999 »

erosenbe0 wrote: post #224
Ourgon wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it more dirty than diesel emissions? I have no idea, but old diesels were nasty. When comparing old diesels to old coal power plants the power plants win by being more efficient but both belch out a lot of pollution. They also have the advantage of burning coal, a fuel which is available in abundance and does not need as much processing as crude oil does to be used in diesel engines. When comparing old diesels t…

I have found measuring in typical American neighborhoods that PM2.5 is raised the most when people burn wood for recreation or heat in the evening. It is much higher in the evening with a few neighborhood fire pits than during rush hour with a few diesel vehicles around. This is also when residents have asthma symptoms too. To be fair they are more likely to be home. So it is not cut and dry but if possible I would l…

So what? You can try and clean up both. Particulate is not the only pollutant either. NOx and ozone are also emitted from diesel cars.

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

#250

Post by bluGill »

worik wrote: post #229
bluGill wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most parts that break on a car are common to electric or engines. Suspension, brake fluid (the brakes might last longer but the fluid should be replaced every few years), tires, doors, seats.

> Most parts that break on a car are common to electric or engines. Suspension, brake fluid (the brakes might last longer but the fluid should be replaced every few years), tires, doors, seats. It is true that a lot of parts are in common. But there are a lot of moving parts, susceptible to failure in an ICE not in electric. I spent a lot of money recently fixing an oil leak and replacing the cam belt on my ICE. Rout…

Sure, but I just spent a lot of money on my car fixing non engine related problems. Most of the moving parts in an engine are well lubricated and thus don't fail very often. The real expensive failure on any car is when road salt rusts the body away.
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