Do Londoners dream of electric buses?
91–99 of 99 posts
Re: Do Londoners dream of electric buses?
#92TFA has great practical information about the switch from diesel to battery. A few examples: * How do you arrange parked buses in a garage so that they can charge? Diagrams included! * Purchase cost: 2x up front compared to diesel, but improving * Operating cost: 50% lower than diesel (but labor—hiring the driver—is still 60%)
In discussing the economics, the article neglected to mention the huge reduction in maintenance costs.
Re: Do Londoners dream of electric buses?
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh yes. My trips to countries such as Thailand, Italy, Holland, Japan, Denmark, the US (Pittsburgh, LA, NY) and Spain can never end quickly enough. The thought occurs to me that you've only visited France and whatever they're calling Czechoslovakia this year.
Whereas as someone who spends quite a lot of time each year in Spain and Italy, and dearly love both; have family in one and a partner from the other - we are both quite glad to return to Britain after a few weeks away. She, particularly, sees the downsides of her home country quite quickly. I have a bit more tolerance, but there're elements of a certain flavour of society missed. For us, anyway. Oh, and I visited Cz…
I see you didn't defend France there!
Re: Do Londoners dream of electric buses?
#94I live on the 153 route in Islington which was recently converted to these BYD all electric buses.
It's fantastic. In a quiet residential area they are nearly silent and when I cycle by them on the way work there's no fumes.
The strangest thing is when you ride them you hear every seat rattle and squeak because there's no roaring engine to drown it out.
Re: Do Londoners dream of electric buses?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Come on though, this supposed austerity is nothing of the sort, with lavish benefits still in place and an unsustainable level of public spending, never mind the gargantuan debt - and we don't even have a proper low tax alternative political party anymore now that the Tories have decided to keep the spending taps turned on full. And no one really knows what's going to happen post Brexit. We could become the successfu…
> We could become the successful low-tax Singapore style trading hub that so terrifies Europe. I can speculate also. The UK’s main problem isn’t any particular UK goal, it’s the total lack of anyone competent in charge and, separately, the lack of anyone powerful/charismatic enough to pick only one of the, I count six, main mutually-incompatible post-Brexit targets (each of which comes in left and right wing variatio…
I agree with you on the absolute paucity of leadership - but I'd extend that to Labour also. And I suspect the lack of planning for afterwards was partly out of denial that the plebs would ever dare vote leave, and partly deliberately to make leaving so disastrous that it becomes impossible - something which the civil service has been accused of.
Re: Do Londoners dream of electric buses?
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We could become the successful low-tax Singapore style trading hub that so terrifies Europe. I can speculate also. The UK’s main problem isn’t any particular UK goal, it’s the total lack of anyone competent in charge and, separately, the lack of anyone powerful/charismatic enough to pick only one of the, I count six, main mutually-incompatible post-Brexit targets (each of which comes in left and right wing variatio…
I agree with you on the absolute paucity of leadership - but I'd extend that to Labour also. And I suspect the lack of planning for afterwards was partly out of denial that the plebs would ever dare vote leave, and partly deliberately to make leaving so disastrous that it becomes impossible - something which the civil service has been accused of.
I marginally agree about Labour: they mainly portray themselves better just because they don’t need to actually do anything. However, my agreement is not absolute: on the other hand everyone knows that none of the MPs like Corbyn yet the wider party loves him and MPs will therefore mostly do what he says, so he can — bizarrely — be the strong and stable leader that May thought she was, and May can be the leaf blowing in the wind that she thought he was.
As for the latter, I think only the first. The second component would require the government to be as smart as it thinks it is rather than as dumb as it is currently acting. While I am sure some in the government will make such accusations as genuine and sincere beliefs, the government reminds me of a former client who took something like four attempts at telling me to make a button “wider” and rejecting the changes before I ended up asking for a picture and discovering they meant “taller”.
By the way, thanks for keeping it polite! This is a massively divisive topic and I want to applaud every single involved person who avoids internet shouting.
Re: Do Londoners dream of electric buses?
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
well, the regenerative braking will reduce brake dust a bit. Certainly not completely, but its a start.
Anecdotally, regenerative braking on an EV reduces brake pad wear by somewhere around 50-80%. It's rare to have to replace brake pads in an EV, or even to see them significantly worn. On urban buses, which are constantly starting and stopping, I imagine it could be even more.
If EV companies were confident in their engineering, one could design a system with entirely electric braking.
No brake pads required. Simply dump the energy into the battery (or a big heater for the excess when the battery is full or too cold to charge)
Obviously, you can't have a failure in the electrical or control system or you can't brake anymore, so that part will have to be designed with much more redundancy than it is in todays vehicles.
Re: Do Londoners dream of electric buses?
#98TFA has great practical information about the switch from diesel to battery. A few examples: * How do you arrange parked buses in a garage so that they can charge? Diagrams included! * Purchase cost: 2x up front compared to diesel, but improving * Operating cost: 50% lower than diesel (but labor—hiring the driver—is still 60%)
In discussing the economics, the article neglected to mention the huge reduction in maintenance costs.
I wonder if it is that big?
Your car maintenance you'll typically spend 4 hours for an annual service, at $50 per hour. Total: $200
A bus in a depot uses in house staff ($25 per hour), and since all the busses are identical and they're probably performing the same service on 5 at a time, probably only works out to an hour per bus. Total cost $25.
Thats so small compared to the salary of the driver who drives it around normally, maintenance cost might not be a significant part of the equation.
Re: Do Londoners dream of electric buses?
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Come on though, this supposed austerity is nothing of the sort, with lavish benefits still in place and an unsustainable level of public spending, never mind the gargantuan debt - and we don't even have a proper low tax alternative political party anymore now that the Tories have decided to keep the spending taps turned on full. And no one really knows what's going to happen post Brexit. We could become the successfu…
> with lavish benefits still in place Without looking it up what's the current rate of universal credit? What's the current benefit cap level?
When a life on benefits is a viable career option for many and indeed the system discourages many from looking for work because they would make less that way than on benefits then perhaps there's a problem, and benefits are too generous?
I'm all for looking after the vulnerable, but we give so much money to the feckless that we cannot look after those that are most deserving. Lavish money on the disabled, elderly, and the genuinely incapable. Provide a bare minimum of essentials for the cynical, whilst making life unpleasant enough to encourage take up of opportunities to improve, of which there are no shortage. Why do we give up on people so easily?