Paris suspends electric bus fleet after two fires • Hacker News Board

Re: Paris suspends electric bus fleet after two fires

#61

Post by trmonx » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

mumblemumble wrote: post #57

trmonx wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric buses are not a new hip thing, we have had electric buses since forever. It's called a trolleybus. At the moment its in every way superior to batteries.

I can't see it as being superior in every way. In most cities where I've spent significant time with the public transit system, it's relatively common for the buses to need to reroute around things like road construction and street festivals. Also, buses frequently need to pass other buses on the same route that are stopped due to equipment problems or running slowly due to overcrowding. A trolleybus would have a har…

It's not an overreach, trolleybuses work surprisingly well at the moment. Lighter, much, much cheaper, less electricity required. And you need less of them.

Metro, trams, trolleybuses should be used primarily and then you can add electric buses for gaps. That would make sense, not trying to go straight for the most expensive and wasteful option.

Re: Paris suspends electric bus fleet after two fires

#62

Post by dfawcus » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 4:42 PM UTC

plater wrote: post #33

goodpoint wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better: trams and light rail. Smoother ride and no particulate from tyres.

Electric wire bus is better than tram as it does not require expensive tracks. It is also much easier to change the route. The tracks also create a lot of noise and vibration that gets into nearby buildings. Tracks are also dangerous for bicycles, and slippery for cars and trams. There might be benefits with trams, but I do not know what.

Not having a consumable battery pack which has to be replaced, and mineral resources expended upon making new sets?

There is obviously a trade off, some routes are obviously suitable to trams, some others to buses, be they all electric or hybrid. So possibly in ICE mode out of urban areas, and on battery within?

Re: Paris suspends electric bus fleet after two fires

#63

Post by warning26 » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 4:46 PM UTC

subw00f wrote: post #54

trmonx wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric buses are not a new hip thing, we have had electric buses since forever. It's called a trolleybus. At the moment its in every way superior to batteries.

I'm not an expert, but I would think creating or changing existing routes for trolleybuses would require setting up overhead wires, which probably need a few things to be in place beforehand. Isn't that just slower/costlier than simply driving on a different street? What about intercity routes? Doesn't sound superior to me on that front. edit: grammar

Changing routes isn't really that frequent once you have a working setup.

As for intercity travel, this should be set up as rail, not a bus, in basically 100% of cases.

Re: Paris suspends electric bus fleet after two fires

#64

Post by a9h74j » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 4:48 PM UTC

mlok wrote: post #3

Here is a video of the fire : https://www.leparisien.fr/video/video-bus-en-feu-a-paris-reg...

Comparably intense, here is a video of an electric bus fire in India:

http://www.jimstoneindia.com/pagesq22022/page2v.html

Re: Paris suspends electric bus fleet after two fires

#65

Post by epistasis » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #49

epistasis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large lithium ion batteries are new, however.

TFL has been running all-electric bus routes in several areas of London since at least 2014 with no issues. All-electric lithium pack buses are +10 year old tech. Nothing about this is experimental. This is probably more likely an OEM fuck-up or whoever was contracted by the city of Paris to supply these buses.

In the context of 100 years of electric buses, 10 years is still quite new.

Agreed that this is an error on the manufacturer. It's actually really hard to get design and manufacturing quality to such a high degree to prevent one of the many many many cells from shorting and causing a fire. The battery manufacturers that have this figured out have built a really great wall for themselves, which is probably why we won't see many new large battery manufacturers from here on out.

Re: Paris suspends electric bus fleet after two fires

#66

Post by kkfx » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 5:04 PM UTC

Galxeagle wrote: post #45

kkfx wrote: post #24

In the past we have had electric bus with electricity coming from an aerial network, surely they have some limits, but they are the sole logic design for a city. A small battery just to emergency maneuver but nothing more. It's FAR cheaper and it's already proved they can last 50+ years without much maintenance. Batteries are meaningful for cars and trucks waiting for some aerial electrical network like starting from…

Overhead wires take a lot of maintenance - point of reference, Vancouver BC's transit authority reported maintenance costs per km were actually higher for their electric trolleys than both their diesel and CNG buses. And having lived with them, being effectively restricted to being 'on rails' leads to challenges in traffic or road closures where traditional buses would re-route down a different street. I think batter…

Thanks for the report, not so easy to source valuable information!

I nevertheless object with a side reasoning: costs are complex beast, in an age of scarcity, where oil is pushed aside no matter if for good or bad reasons, how costs can change?

I mean: maintaining an aerial network and relevant trolleys is surely expensive, but expensive in what? In natural resources or in worked hours q and hour of vehicle mandatory stops? If it's just in worked hours/maintenance time than in the aforementioned age of scarcity such cost does not matter much.

Few marginal notes:

- at page 77 the graph 5-35 show a curious cost per km change in late 2008, why? Is this due to aging or to purely economical factors like supply chain changes for spare parts, safety norms changes etc?

- the ability to roll and change routes without capital infrastructure set up will be king is another complex beast: on scale that's the reason many researchers try to push naval and very-short-range aviation, from flying taxis to city-to-nearby-city small scale logistics: STOL/VTOL have almost the same industrial cost (beware, industrial not price tag on sale) than modern cars and vans, they cost more in opex but new physical road/rail infra development and regular maintenance/changes cost skyrocketing high capex for an uncertain future since they demand 10+y just to be finished on scale and they need 30-50+y to be paid back enough. At city scale though maintaining a complete coverage of a municipal aerial electrical grid for vehicles especially if we ALSO open if to future other transports (like food distribution logistic till even private cars) might be sustainable. Not in today economy, but in the new world one. In the end actual cities are not sustainable already, we figure out new smaller cities that look like much to small factories with workers inside also for this issue...

- with actual battery chemistry we simply can't sustain a real BEV fleet, we can't produce enough batteries for a new FIRST generation of vehicles nor we know how to recycle them to having enough resources for the next generation in just 5-8 years. BEVs can be done for a small scale of private vehicles, mostly targeting wealthy people + some "glorified golf cart" [1] for specific short range usage...

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3vny5/glorified-electric-go...

Re: Paris suspends electric bus fleet after two fires

#67

Post by jeffbee » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

I was on a bus that caught fire but it was a diesel so it didn't make the papers.

It was one of SF Muni's trolley lines up a ludicrously steep hill, which had been temporarily substituted with diesel coaches for a day because of a detour. The coach was crush-loaded in Chinatown as is typical and it was grinding up the hill at a walking pace with the engine roaring at wide-open throttle when it suddenly exploded in a fireball, probably based on my guesswork a blown gasket followed by ignition of a cloud of oil and fuel.

In my current town we have a fleet of hydrogen fuel cell coaches and their potential explosive nature does not concern me.

Re: Paris suspends electric bus fleet after two fires

#68

Post by DoingIsLearning » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 5:18 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #65

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFL has been running all-electric bus routes in several areas of London since at least 2014 with no issues. All-electric lithium pack buses are +10 year old tech. Nothing about this is experimental. This is probably more likely an OEM fuck-up or whoever was contracted by the city of Paris to supply these buses.

In the context of 100 years of electric buses, 10 years is still quite new. Agreed that this is an error on the manufacturer. It's actually really hard to get design and manufacturing quality to such a high degree to prevent one of the many many many cells from shorting and causing a fire. The battery manufacturers that have this figured out have built a really great wall for themselves, which is probably why we won'…

> In the context of 100 years of electric buses, 10 years is still quite new.

No, If we were talking about the effects of some Tech in Human health I would agree with this sort of cautionary principle.

In the context of electronics, lithium batteries are a 46BN dollar market. Modern manufacturing is producing billions of assemblies and power electronics with well known quality assurance, failure-modes, MTTF, etc.

In the context of modern manufacturing processes and volume 10 years is an eternity.

Re: Paris suspends electric bus fleet after two fires

#69

Post by peterpost2 » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 6:14 PM UTC

trmonx wrote: post #61

mumblemumble wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see it as being superior in every way. In most cities where I've spent significant time with the public transit system, it's relatively common for the buses to need to reroute around things like road construction and street festivals. Also, buses frequently need to pass other buses on the same route that are stopped due to equipment problems or running slowly due to overcrowding. A trolleybus would have a har…

It's not an overreach, trolleybuses work surprisingly well at the moment. Lighter, much, much cheaper, less electricity required. And you need less of them. Metro, trams, trolleybuses should be used primarily and then you can add electric buses for gaps. That would make sense, not trying to go straight for the most expensive and wasteful option.

How can they be cheaper? You still need to install all the overhead wiresm this only works if you assume they the routes never change. And will require an absurdly huge initial investment. Might be better/cheaper to just see if batteries get better or if more quick charge points can he installed.

Re: Paris suspends electric bus fleet after two fires

#70

Post by peterpost2 » Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

nicbou wrote: post #60

mumblemumble wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see it as being superior in every way. In most cities where I've spent significant time with the public transit system, it's relatively common for the buses to need to reroute around things like road construction and street festivals. Also, buses frequently need to pass other buses on the same route that are stopped due to equipment problems or running slowly due to overcrowding. A trolleybus would have a har…

What about an hybrid solution? Smaller batteries could let trolleybuses venture from their infrastructure as needed, but at a reduced cost.

We had this here in the Netherlands, the system broke down quite a lot and apparently had quite some wear and tear

I guess it can be improved thoug.