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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

#211

Post by judge2020 »

bsdetector wrote: post #179
kemiller wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

In the same vein as my sibling comment, the average is an average because not everyone drives a prius; tons of the US are dominated by trucks and SUVs. A more informed metric would be comparing EV vs ICE in cities based on those cities' percentage of electricity generation and average MPG based on the car population.

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

#212

Post by elihu »

speedgoose wrote: post #50
elihu wrote: post #30

Apparently 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 r…

Is safety a criteria for school bus in USA? I thought it was only cost since the design is from the last century and many bus don’t even have seatbelts.

When it comes to batteries, I can't imagine safety not being a major design consideration. EV fires are maybe exaggerated a bit in the media because of the novelty whereas ICE vehicle fires aren't as newsworthy, but they're still a thing that can happen and could potentially be very destructive and hazardous especially on something with a huge battery pack like a bus. Using a kind of battery that tends not to burst into flames if ill-treated seems like a good idea.

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

#213

Post by judge2020 »

mcv wrote: post #132
kemiller wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 parents worried about this, simply putting more schools within a mile or two of homes isn't going to work without parents being on board.

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

#214

Post by lttlrck »

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 daughter takes an electric bluebird to school. It has broken down numerous times this year, it has even stopped mid-route due to low battery (no idea who's to blame for that). Nevertheless it's nice to see progress and things will get better.

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

#215

Post by judge2020 »

lucastheisen wrote: post #188
mike_d wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad your parents were in an economic situation where you could live walking distance from school in a neighborhood safe enough to do so. Only 9% of students in the US live within a reasonable walking distance.

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

From a 2014 study in Norfolk, UK[0] (note: UK should have relatively similar child obesity rates as the US at this time, given they only surpassed the US in 2018[1]):

> This study shows that young people living closer to school are more likely to walk to school than those living further away (Panter et al., 2008, Pont et al., 2009). The novel contribution of this work is the identification of the threshold distances that children walk to school, and that this increases as young people age; the criterion distances were 1421 m (0.8 miles) at 10 years, 1627 m (~1 mile) at 11 years and 3046 m (~1.9 miles) at 14 years.

However, note that US suburbs are often vastly more spread out while servicing the same size population: for example, Worcester, England at 100k population is only 12 square miles[2] and Chico California with 100k population is 34 square miles[3].

0: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135382921...

1: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5750341/Bigger-11-y...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester,_England

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chico,_California

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

#216

Post by hedora »

ajford wrote: post #153
wolverine876 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would electric buses have more problems on winter roads than ICE buses?

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.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that's mostly because it's a Chevy, not because managing lithium batteries in cold weather is an unsolved problem:

https://news.yahoo.com/cold-hard-truth-evs-winter-103037566....

If you are in a climate where freezing weather is common, you might want to swap it for a different brand. There are comparably priced options that work well in the cold (just look at the chart in the article).

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

#217

Post by prawn »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #47
Johnny555 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average lifetime of a schoolbus is 10 - 12 years, so if they do manage to keep this service going for a decade, that's pretty good -- in 10 years the schol district would have been ready to refresh their fleet anyway, and hopefully the reason this business can't survive long-term is that electric buses become cheaper and ubiquitous.

Part of the reason for the 10-12 year lifespan is that ICE motors are really complicated and at a certain point, it's cheaper to throw out the bus than pay for motor repairs. EV motors last a lot longer and are a lot easier to maintain.

Rather than throw them out, I'd say there's an optimal point to sell them off. (A couple of years ago, I bought a bus that was sold by an institution when the mileage reached a certain point.)

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

#218

Post by rootusrootus »

aurizon wrote: post #194
rootusrootus wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most will be under NDA's I expect? What are the odds that school districts are even legally allowed to sign such an NDA?

Hard to say. Most contracts are public access files. but I am not sure if there are redactions for competitive reasons?

To prove I'm an optimist, I'll say that most levels of government in the US must have transparency regulations that would prevent them from being bound by any kind of NDA. Otherwise the potential for corruption is pretty significant. Like I said, I'm an optimist.

If you trust google search, my 2 minute research suggests the federal government explicitly disallows NDAs from binding them, and that in government overall NDAs are really rare. But that information is worth roughly how much it cost me to search for it.

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

#219

Post by erosenbe0 »

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,…

Nope, about 1/3 of Americans have Medicaid or Medicare. At least 6% of all gdp is government dollars in healthcare, probably more.

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

#220

Post by rootusrootus »

thethethethe wrote: post #160
rootusrootus wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would significantly expand taxes, and that nearly always faces stiff opposition with voters. Especially when it is an open-ended increase.

> 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…

The only way you could sell it as an overall less expensive option would be with really elaborate studies that could convincingly tie the transportation effects to the design of the school system.

But, when it comes to schools, fewer buildings means lower costs. We've been suffering this for years, there aren't anywhere near as many schools in my district as there were 30 or 40 years ago, even as the number of students go up. It's less expensive to consolidate the schools into a fewer number of locations and increase the capacity of the remaining locations.

Ergo, going the other direction and creating more, smaller schools (each with their own infrastructure, custodians, some level of administration, etc) is going to require taxpayers to foot the bill. And not like a levy that only lasts for X years, but on an ongoing basis. Where I live (Oregon) there is massive resistance to new taxes. I do not think we are unique in that regard.

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