51–60 of 342 posts
Working at Proterra, we're doing our part.
Live in Greenville, SC and was waiting for a Proterra comment. :)
I'm back in the Greenville site a bunch. Really nice area, the downtown is super active, people really friendly. My wife and I have it on the think about list for bugging out of CA.
Plus they just bought some of our buses.
It's a strange shift in affairs that China appears to have the greatest incentives (urban pollution, petroleum imports) today to advance clean transportation and energy while the US has stalled or moved backward, at least the Federal level. Western European countries, for whom fossil fuels don't seem to be an identity politics issue like in the US, are also making more progress in electrifying their transportation an…
What's sad is that the majority of electric buses being purchased both in America and around the globe aren't manufactured in the US. We have a Silicon Valley company, Tesla, that kicked off the world-wide move to battery powered autos. Why is there not a US company recognized as the leader in buses? There are a few California companies on this list but they're tiny. Here in Michigan the leading player is French and…
Diesel vs electric is a false dichotomy. Many cities in north america have natural-gas powered buses, and a lot of taxi fleets are CNG as well. Then there's also old-style cable cars and overhead electric lines scattered around, too.
Working at Proterra, we're doing our part.
Working at Proterra, we're doing our part.
Can you outline a bit how cities are customising the buses? I've a bit of the report posted here a week or so. There are over 20 companies (of course ones in US and EU paying 2-3x over Chinese ones) and I can't fathom what they are competing over. Seems like a huge waste of resources.
We of course think our tech is better.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that more than total Tesla cars on the road? I presume producing electric buses are much more complicated than cars. Tesla sounds like a lot hype compared with above stats.
It really is about the same. Electric buses aren’t new of course (Seattle has had them forever), but the ability to use them with batteries and without overhead wires is the new thing. In the bus the battery is just much bigger (usually stored on top).
Disclosure< I work for Proterra and our packs are on the bottom.
What's sad is that the majority of electric buses being purchased both in America and around the globe aren't manufactured in the US. We have a Silicon Valley company, Tesla, that kicked off the world-wide move to battery powered autos. Why is there not a US company recognized as the leader in buses? There are a few California companies on this list but they're tiny. Here in Michigan the leading player is French and…
Detroit should have gotten started on this, sure. But who in Detroit? There just aren't that many American coach builders left in the transit space. GM's bus division got sold off in the 80s, and eventually got sold to Volvo. Flxible eventually went out of business in the 90s (not helped by safety issues). Mack got out of coach building ages ago (and is owned by Volvo these days). Neoplan just built German designs, and went out of business about ten years ago. NABI just built Ikarus (Hungarian) designs and got bought out and shut down by Volvo. Ford and Kenworth haven't built buses in ages. Crown imported some Ikarus buses, but they went out of business a while ago. Blue Bird doesn't do transit buses to the best of my knowledge. Gillig is still around but has mostly been a bit player in the Bay Area at least.
That said, Reagan's Buy American mandate has ensured the opposite, at least within the public transit sphere. Major components that are not American made need waivers if DOT funds are used.
Trolley coaches (what many may think of when they think of electric buses) are pretty rare in the United States. Out here our trolley coaches are mostly Orion (Canadian, bought by Mercedes-Benz, now defunct) and New Flyer (Canadian). Both assembled their vehicles in the United States. Hell, even our decrepit Skoda buses were assembled in San Francisco.
Battery electric buses are almost unheard of in the United States (unsure if this the chicken or egg part of the problem), and the only ones I've seen in person were in Madrid and those were tiny.
Diesel-electric hybrids are becoming quite a bit more common, and for the diesel part of the hybrid equation you'll generally find American motors (e.g. Cummins, Detroit Diesel).
So, sure, it'd be nice to see American companies leading the way with electric buses (at least domestically). I'd argue there's just not enough critical mass for that to happen. It's the same reason Sukhoi's SSJ hasn't sold well. They have such minimal presence outside of Russia that it's hard to get parts and support for them. Even Mexico's Interjet which has reportedly been quite happy with their SSJs has had to ground them.