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Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry

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Re: Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry

#81

Post by seanmcdirmid »

dver wrote: post #59
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Might be better on the bottom. See this rollover during testing. https://insideevs.com/four-injured-electric-bus-rollover-inc... Disclosure< I work for Proterra and our packs are on the bottom.

Is that the norm? I guess the floor could be raised with a higher roof to compensate. I’ve noticed that new energy buses are taller (NG and electric) to make room for fuel/battery, but I’m not exactly sure where that is going.

Re: Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry

#82

Post by freddie_mercury »

abakker wrote: post #67
danans wrote: post #21

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…

I don't know if it really proves anything and it might be OT from your point, but, the confounding variable is that in the US - especially outside of the major urban areas - everything is just very far away in terms of miles. Lacking a car, you can expect life to be very difficult. there are still plenty of places in the US where the range of a tesla might be a borderline problem week-to-week. (though probably not as…

The OP was talking about China. China is bigger than the continental US. I think the persistent myth about the US's size being some unique problem doesn't explain much.

What's more, if you think of the EU as a comparison for the US, with the individual counties as analogues for US states, it seems to explain even less. Belgium and Massachusetts are the same size but over has much better transit options than the other.

Re: Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry

#83

Post by pathseeker »

shermozle wrote: post #36

Please stop linking to Bloomberg. The auto-play video at least is muted, but when you go and press the pause button it... unmutes the video. Then you have to press it again to actually pause. Fuck these guys and their dark patterns.

Better than the NYT/WSJ/etc links that slam you right into paywalls.

Re: Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry

#84

Post by danans »

zaroth wrote: post #42
_bxg1 wrote: post #15

Worried as I am about China's authoritarian practices and their growing influence, they sure are effective at solving environmental problems.

You may have missed this point in TFA; “China is ahead on electrifying its fleet because it has the world’s worst pollution problem. With a growing urban population and galloping energy demand, the nation’s legendary smogs were responsible for 1.6 million extra deaths in 2015, according to non-profit Berkeley Earth.” It’s great to celebrate progress, but don’t fall for the spin. A study published in Nature [1] found…

> The same level of investment into electric buses in the US would be a tradgedy in the sense of actual lives lost due to gross misallocation of public funds.

I get it that you don't like public investment in electric buses, but there is no evidence to suggest that such investment would cause any "actual lives lost", vs the other much bigger public budget items in the US.

If anything, more people in buses would likely reduce a significant cause of deaths in the US: car accidents.

Re: Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry

#85

Post by reissbaker »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #82
abakker wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it really proves anything and it might be OT from your point, but, the confounding variable is that in the US - especially outside of the major urban areas - everything is just very far away in terms of miles. Lacking a car, you can expect life to be very difficult. there are still plenty of places in the US where the range of a tesla might be a borderline problem week-to-week. (though probably not as…

The OP was talking about China. China is bigger than the continental US. I think the persistent myth about the US's size being some unique problem doesn't explain much. What's more, if you think of the EU as a comparison for the US, with the individual counties as analogues for US states, it seems to explain even less. Belgium and Massachusetts are the same size but over has much better transit options than the other…

Sheer landmass is less critical for transit than population density. The US has a population density of 33 people per square kilometer; China is nearly five times more dense at 144 people per square kilometer. [1] This sparse population distribution is one of the causes of many of the difficult-to-solve infrastructure problems in the US, such as poor broadband rollout, poor transit, etc.

For what it's worth the United States is actually larger in landmass size than China: 9.834 million square km in the US vs. 9.597 million square km in China. But China has over quadruple the population.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

Re: Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry

#86

Post by abakker »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #82
abakker wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it really proves anything and it might be OT from your point, but, the confounding variable is that in the US - especially outside of the major urban areas - everything is just very far away in terms of miles. Lacking a car, you can expect life to be very difficult. there are still plenty of places in the US where the range of a tesla might be a borderline problem week-to-week. (though probably not as…

The OP was talking about China. China is bigger than the continental US. I think the persistent myth about the US's size being some unique problem doesn't explain much. What's more, if you think of the EU as a comparison for the US, with the individual counties as analogues for US states, it seems to explain even less. Belgium and Massachusetts are the same size but over has much better transit options than the other…

In 2015, Belgium had a Population density of 363people/Km^2. Massachusetts in 2015 had 336 people/KM^2. So, pretty close. The difference is that Belgium has a much more uniform population distribution vs Massachusetts.

Secondarily, Belgium can define it's own national policy, while MA must compromise with the rest of the country, including CA, WY, MT, and NY, all of which have very different economic and practical concerns.

The US's size is not a unique problem, but, it is a problem, and the governmental structure we have chosen does pose some unique problems.

Re: Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry

#87

Post by ChuckMcM »

craftyguy wrote: post #72
ChuckMcM wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is picking nits :-) Not only is China rapidly building nuclear power plants, containing the emissions of one plant burning coal is easier than containing the emissions of the 10,000 buses that plant provides power to operate. There is also a benefit to China converting from oil (something imported[1]) to coal (something available locally[2]). [1] https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Chinas-Becomes-Worlds-... [2…

> That is picking nits No, actually it's not. The source of electricity matters, and just because something doesn't directly emit pollutants does not mean its power is derived without emitting pollutants.

I don't disagree the source of electricity does matter. But who is to say where the electron coming out of the plug came from? Perhaps it came from one of their existing nuclear plants[1] ?

For me, when you get to the point where you can construct two valid statements that both are supported by available information, yet one disproves a statement and the other proves it, you have reached the point of 'nits'.

In this case :

"They are not zero emission because electricity can come from a coal fired plant."

"The are zero emission because electricity can come from a nuclear power plant."

Pedants could go a different way, they could say "the bus is zero emission but the infrastructure isn't."

We saw a lot of that with solar panels where people would argue that the energy to smelt the aluminum to make the frames and furnaces to grow the silicon ingots far exceeded any amount of energy that the solar cells themselves would provide.

But one has to wonder, what is the point of arguing at that level when, as the article states, the pollution where the buses are deployed is significantly less?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China

Re: Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry

#88

Post by greglindahl »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #81
dver wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be better on the bottom. See this rollover during testing. https://insideevs.com/four-injured-electric-bus-rollover-inc... Disclosure< I work for Proterra and our packs are on the bottom.

Is that the norm? I guess the floor could be raised with a higher roof to compensate. I’ve noticed that new energy buses are taller (NG and electric) to make room for fuel/battery, but I’m not exactly sure where that is going.

Car batteries in the floors of cars don't seem to have made them any taller.

Re: Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry

#89

Post by seandoe »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #82
abakker wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it really proves anything and it might be OT from your point, but, the confounding variable is that in the US - especially outside of the major urban areas - everything is just very far away in terms of miles. Lacking a car, you can expect life to be very difficult. there are still plenty of places in the US where the range of a tesla might be a borderline problem week-to-week. (though probably not as…

The OP was talking about China. China is bigger than the continental US. I think the persistent myth about the US's size being some unique problem doesn't explain much. What's more, if you think of the EU as a comparison for the US, with the individual counties as analogues for US states, it seems to explain even less. Belgium and Massachusetts are the same size but over has much better transit options than the other…

I think abakker's point is that the US is much less densely populated compared to China and the EU. The US has much of its population distributed far distances from urban areas, which makes electric vehicles a less desirable option.

Re: Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry

#90

Post by rdtsc »

quadrangle wrote: post #76
craftyguy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So national policy is essentially catering to the minority that live in rural areas? That seems backwards.

It's not about real rural areas, it's sprawl largely. It's been the dominant and TOP-DOWN planned development pattern for a whole generation, and it's totally tragic. Not only from energy perspective but nearly all other variables. There's almost nothing arguably redeemable about sprawl. https://www.strongtowns.org/ is about the best org discussing these issues and isn't coming from a left- or right-wing perspective…

> and TOP-DOWN planned development pattern for a whole generation,

I'd almost think it is bottom-up not top-down. Top down would imply some central planning, allowance for more space, livable communities, more trees, more parks and trails, mixed zoning etc. I grew up in a Soviet Union and towns and cities were designed top-down. Nice wide streets, electric trolley buses in the city that ran regularly. For all the ills and terrible things it was actually not as a bad as far as the general layout was concerned.

In US it is bottom-up because every developer buys land then tries to maximize their profit by shoving as many houses and cul-de-sacs as they can. Or as many office buildings etc. Every town wants to maximize its property taxes so they have their own interests at work. People who bought the property also now have different incentives so you have zoning and NIMBY. Ideally all these self-interests would somehow magically align to produce something great. But it often doesn't.

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