Hydrogen vs. Battery Buses: A European Transit Reality Check

Post by mmooss » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 8:24 AM UTC

spacebanana7 wrote: post #61

mmooss wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The biggest hydrogen bus fleet seems to be 35 vehicles From the OP: Cologne is one of the few relatively good news stories for hydrogen bus fleets. Regionalverkehr Köln (RVK) has become the largest operator of hydrogen fuel cell buses in Europe, with a fleet that reached 101 vehicles by late 2024 and is expected to grow to 160 by the end of 2025.

Still, their point was directionally correct. London has 1397 electric buses and Moscow has over 2300. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_emission_buses_in_London https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_buses_in_Moscow

Post by linedgolyi » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 8:30 AM UTC

CraigJPerry wrote: post #81

linedgolyi wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a similar danger with very quiet and/or electric cars where people near the school barely hear them coming and need more attention to keep themselves safe. Avoiding an older gas or diesel car is practically automatic as you can hear their speed, acceleration and location comparatively far away. I think EV manufacturers have added some sort of noise to low speed driving, but I haven't heard anything beyond one…

I thought they all had AVAS fitted? Are there markets where this isn’t the case?

Post by dvdkon » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 8:31 AM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #67

occz wrote: post #20

Electric buses in the form of trolleybuses seems like the better option than either of these, although I do agree that battery buses beat hydrogen every day of the week.

Batteries are cheap. Installing lots of copper lines for trolley buses isn't. That's why trolley buses are pretty rare. Old idea, didn't really take that well. There are a handful of cities that have them. And they've had them for decades. Most of those cities now also have battery electrical buses to service all the areas where the cables don't go. Expanding the network of cables doesn't seem to have a very high pri…

Post by amarcheschi » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 8:42 AM UTC

linedgolyi wrote: post #77

api wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live in the US my kids still take “cheese buses” to school that haven’t changed a bit. They’re diesel and you can hear them blocks away. When they pull up with their air brakes going off and their diesel shifting to idle it sounds like one of those spice miner things from Dune going to work. If they ever go electric I’m not sure how we’ll know it’s time to take the kids out. Won’t be able to hear them coming.

There's a similar danger with very quiet and/or electric cars where people near the school barely hear them coming and need more attention to keep themselves safe. Avoiding an older gas or diesel car is practically automatic as you can hear their speed, acceleration and location comparatively far away. I think EV manufacturers have added some sort of noise to low speed driving, but I haven't heard anything beyond one…

Post by cenamus » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 9:02 AM UTC

m4rtink wrote: post #2

I'm not really sure there is any place for a discussion - you would need a whole new infrastructure for hydrogen powered buses, while keeping a lot of the downsides of fossil fueled air breathing vehicles (eq. air filters filters regardless of if you burn the hydrogen or use it in fuel cells). With battery buses - you might need to slightly beef up the local transformer and installs some new wires and that's it. Or e…