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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

#251

Post by lenkite »

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,…

Lots of nations have public health-care and millions of diesel motors.

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

#252

Post by andrewallbright »

I get a little suspicious. Are we comparing both solutions at scale, or just one at scale and the other at a smaller scale?

The question boils down to: how many people are both systems currently moving. What would it take to build up the other system to operate at the first system's scale?

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

#253

Post by daniel-cussen »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #241
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…

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,…

> 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.)

(In the following post I use "you" rhetorically, not talking about Broken_Hippo directly.)

Yeah. The body rental place makes it look like the killerest deal imaginable, like you get all the benefits of having human workers, minus actually having to deal with any human problems. No unions or strikes, if the body rental you're using gets organized it dies without the collateral damage to the renter, you just switch outsourcing unit. And there's tons of other human problems, and those human problems require other humans's help. They ought to get real, people are expensive, life is expensive, if something is more expensive than life we replace it with life.

There is this deal you can get where you pay about half market wages, almost exactly half, and there's no unionization or anything. Just have to worry about emigration. Called slavery, these days people focus on the whipping and the coercion, they forget if you're a slave your master will be disgustingly cheap with the things you need he must provide for you, because he knows it's literally painful to ask.

If you want something cheap and rather your money ends up spent on electricity than food, like who cares a joule's a joule, go, go and fire 100% of your workers and replace them all with machines. Sure to make a lot of money!

What will you spend it on, alternating current or direct current? What voltage are you compatible with?

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

#254

Post by vdo »

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.

I agree, sorry to be tangential, but school buses even have a whole community around converting them into rvs/homes, skoolies. The advice thrown around most often within this community trends toward picking diesel over gas, because diesel ones are very reliable when maintained. I always read it's better to get a pre-2004 diesel bus, because they have simpler, more mechanical parts. Diesel engines are really hyped among skoolie enthusiasts, though of course that is not to say that in e.g. fb groups, you don't hear horror stories of people stranded with a broke-down rig, it's usually lack of maintenance though. When maintained, they do last well past when school districts retire them--maybe survivorship bias, the ones that lasted to the end were more likely to keep lasting. My boyfriend has one such bus that was made the same year he was born (1989) and it took us on a 10-state roadtrip and was our home for over a year.

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

#255

Post by andrepd »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #241
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…

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,…

>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.

In my country's capital there is a plan of using a fleet of school mini-buses (as "taking kids to school" is among the top reasons why people say they still use a car for their daily commute), but also of putting these to work outside the narrow band of school start/end in other uses: taking old people to their doctors appointments, and commercial on-demand uberpool type transport.

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

#256

Post by ClumsyPilot »

bluGill wrote: post #250
worik wrote: post #229

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. 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.

"Most of the moving parts in an engine are well lubricated and thus don't fail very often."

For all our family cars over last 30 years, 90% of repair cost was engine. Those oarts are under temperature, pressure and massive friction.

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

#257

Post by Gwypaas »

xxpor wrote: post #53
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…

Yes, that's a great point. Even if you ignore the usual idle time between the morning and afternoon runs, I have to imagine a range of 150-200 miles would cover ~95% of use cases. The bus problem therefore should be much easier than the long haul truck problem. Plus, there's no trailer so you could run the battery pack the entire length of the bus.

They work really well for city buses also, although they need some charging at the ends. Still have a sweet spot in regards to range though even though the latest generation allows for high capacity buses. They needed to rework a bunch of lines to fit in the envelope.

https://www.electricitygoteborg.se/en/news/improved-urban-en...

Also helps that Volvo is headquartered in Goteborg, so always eager to try new things. The first "prototype" style BEV bus line opened early 2015.

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

#258

Post by sanp »

itsoktocry wrote: post #76
sanp wrote: post #14

I still don't get that TCO for EV is higher than Diesel. On the consumer side, let's look at Tesla Model Y vs. Lexus RX 350. I am using "premium" makes on both sides of this equations. If we want to go with a cheaper ICE then it should be compared with a cheaper EV. Idea being, there is a reasonable comparison where EV comes out ahead on TCO. Cost / mile: $0.04 vs. $0.10 Difference in purchase cost: $55K (base model…

> I am using "premium" makes on both sides of this equations I guess, but a "premium" Model Y doesn't have any features that a far lesser ICE doesn't have, with inferior build quality. That's kind of the point. A premium Honda, VW or Toyota SUV are better comparisons, and substantially cheaper. Of course, that makes the TCO much more competitive...

We can compare these ICEs to a Mach-e or an ID.4 or an Ioniq 5. Build quality on these is pretty comparable to premium ICE models from these manufactures.

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

#259

Post by sanp »

gregshap wrote: post #43
sanp wrote: post #14

I still don't get that TCO for EV is higher than Diesel. On the consumer side, let's look at Tesla Model Y vs. Lexus RX 350. I am using "premium" makes on both sides of this equations. If we want to go with a cheaper ICE then it should be compared with a cheaper EV. Idea being, there is a reasonable comparison where EV comes out ahead on TCO. Cost / mile: $0.04 vs. $0.10 Difference in purchase cost: $55K (base model…

Tax credits are dollar for dollar reduction in taxes owed. There's no reason to apply a marginal tax rate.

Not sure I follow. The effective benefit of this tax break is different based on your tax bracket. So, we should be using the marginal tax rate.

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

#260

Post by sanp »

clomond wrote: post #70
sanp wrote: post #14

I still don't get that TCO for EV is higher than Diesel. On the consumer side, let's look at Tesla Model Y vs. Lexus RX 350. I am using "premium" makes on both sides of this equations. If we want to go with a cheaper ICE then it should be compared with a cheaper EV. Idea being, there is a reasonable comparison where EV comes out ahead on TCO. Cost / mile: $0.04 vs. $0.10 Difference in purchase cost: $55K (base model…

TCOs for individual consumers will be vastly different depending on the parameters of the situation, with particular impact driven by volume of miles driven annually. Due to this, commercial fleets in my view have a much clearer picture here than personal vehicle decisions. This is also particularly driven by personal vehicle purchases being driven less by “TCO” in a strict sense but rather “what is my monthly paymen…

That’s fair. TCO decisions are probably more relevant in a commercial context.
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