US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-fleets/us-schools-can-subscribe-to-an-electric-school-bus-fleet-at-prices-that-beat-diesel

by orangebanana1 • 4 years ago

383 282 4 years ago

canarymedia.com

bell-cot• 4 years ago

Hmm...buses that (per the article) cost 2x or 3x what diesel ones would. From a company that's raising a whole lotta $$$ from VC's. And (plausibly) school districts will get rid of their old diesel bus fleets when they switch over...

Is anyone else suspecting an "of course we'll loose money like crazy, until we hit 'em with the massive price increase" business model?

EDIT: Wow, huge response. 3 points to add:

- Yes, kids not breathing fumes is better...but that doesn't change the company's nor the school district's finances.

- No, I have no good data on whether the "vastly lower TCO will cover the higher up front cost..." theory is 100% correct, or utter BS.

- My one not-too-close data point: A friend worked for a metropolitan bus system ~2011. She said they were getting rid of their "~1.4 up-front cost" diesel-electric hybrid buses - because the real TCO was considerably worse than the older, straight-diesel buses.

pengaru2• 4 years ago

The "subscribed" buses will be privately owned and operated, they'll be increasingly filled with advertising and other predatory bullshit for exploiting the passengers.

krasin• 4 years ago

Don't forget a snack machine with sweets right inside the bus.

Nasrudith• 4 years ago

So like city buses?

woodruffw• 4 years ago

I think that's pretty unlikely, at least with schoolbuses. The US has laws around child privacy and advertising that companies easily flaunt online, but are much more difficult to flaunt when your product is a physical bus.

OTOH, I would not be surprised to see these buses rusting in a storage lot within a decade because these firms have closed up shop and some random server somewhere is no longer responding to requests. I hope (but am not hopeful) that municipal and state governments take measures during procurement to ensure that they aren't being turned into captive customers.

AlgorithmicTime• 4 years ago

Literally all the school buses in my area are operated by private companies which contract with the local public school districts. None of them are full of advertising.

elliekelly• 4 years ago

“You’re only two bus rides away from your next Robux reward!”

gruez2• 4 years ago

they'll be increasingly filled with advertising and other predatory bullshit for exploiting the passengers

What's this based on ? AFAIK many school districts already contract out their school bus service. Are we seeing that in those cases?

sockaddr• 4 years ago

While not ideal, the alternative is kids continuing to sit in buses that idle for long periods of time slowly leaking diesel exhaust into the cabin area (at least that was the case with the Bluebird models I rode as a kid), that can't be good.

bnt• 4 years ago

Yea, here the batteries catch fire and a bunch of kids burn to death. Grim, but possible.

loudmax• 4 years ago

I think it's important to keep the electrification and subscription aspects distinct.

Electrification of bus fleets is an absolute good. Electric buses may cost more in the short run, but for the sake of children's health, not to mention the world they live in, school districts should be dumping diesel in favor of electric as soon as they can afford to do so. As taxpayers we should be ready to foot the bill.

There are real concerns with privatization of school bus fleets though. Safety obviously, but also advertising and marketing to children as other posters have pointed out. If a company offered school districts a subscription model with diesel buses we'd be rightfully suspicious of where this could lead. We should maintain these suspicions even as we encourage phasing out diesel fleets in favor of electric.

bend-or-end• 4 years ago

That starts with phasing the purchase and deployment of electric school buses — which still cost two to three times more than their diesel counterparts — to take advantage of expected declines in cost over the coming years, McIntyre said.

Sounds like the model is to be the first mover and being entrenched by the time it's profitable without a price hike

scythe3• 4 years ago

Frankly, if they rip off school districts in order to keep kids from inhaling nitrogen dioxide, that's still a better business model than most of the ones I've heard.

mirntyfirty• 4 years ago

I think that depends on the extent to which they rip them off.

jandrese• 4 years ago

The upfront price difference should be offset in the long term by buying cheap electricity instead of expensive diesel.

vardump• 4 years ago

Hmm...buses that (per the article) cost 2x or 3x what diesel ones would.

What about when you consider total life cycle costs? Diesel fuel costs often many times of cost of the vehicle over its lifespan.

Fuel costs will likely increase quite a bit in the future.

ZeroGravitas3• 4 years ago

This is a fairly standard reframing when your product has lower TCO but higher upfront costs.

If people just look at the upfront cost, they have that 2x or 3x gut reaction and just switch off.

Some nerdier types might draw up a spreadsheet and know exactly how many months they'd expect to break even and start saving.

People familiar with spreadsheets probably also don't have that much trouble getting loans and paying them back on time, and doing even more sums to see if that makes financial sense.

But your average school bus buyer perhaps needs someone else to do all that for them, hedge the risk and present it to them as an immediate saving on their monthly spend.

People have sold rooftop solar this way, or replaced kerosene lamps in Africa with solar and batteries, and EVs Vs monthly Car payment plus fuel.

roughly3• 4 years ago

It's not just the cost over time, it's the availability of capital in large clumps - also known as "the cost of being poor:" It may be 5x cheaper in the long run to pay 3x the cost today, but if you don't have 3x the cost today, well, good luck.

cpwright• 4 years ago

I'm not sure why you would assume that the average school bus buyer can't do a spreadsheet. Our local suburban NY school district is fairly run-of-the mill, and has a budget of $84 million with several million dollars of that being for transportation. We have our own busses and drivers, and they spend about a quarter million dollars a year on diesel fuel.

The Superintendent for business affairs that has an MBA from Columbia and earns $231,000, and should clearly be able to handle a spreadsheet and then making the yearly powerpoint presentations.

itsoktocry2• 4 years ago

This is a fairly standard reframing when your product has lower TCO but higher upfront costs.

I'd say it's the opposite a lot of times. EVs are one such product. People will say, "sure I'm paying 20k more for the car, but I'll make it up in fuel savings and zero maintenance!" without ever calculating how much fuel and maintenance you'd actually have to use to break even. Then, of course, there is the regulatory and temporal risk that energy costs today aren't what they might be down the road, and that there are some high-ticket items an EV can have fail itself.

It's hardly ever a no-brainer, because the invisible hand tends to make it so.

People have sold rooftop solar this way

So many companies have gone bust because of this.

AnonCoward4• 4 years ago

I want to see that spreadsheet.

throwaway0a5e2• 4 years ago

School buses are bought by spreadsheet literate people. Understanding lifetime cost is a job requirement of the kind of people who run bus fleets and most people are qualified to do their jobs and do them satisfactorily.

This isn't a case where a good product isn't succeeding because "hurr durr the public is dumb". People have run the numbers. It just doesn't work, yet.

ihsw• 4 years ago

The play is in vehicle-to-grid (V2G) electric price arbitrage, the article even mentions that a full third of the revenue from the program is coming from selling V2G power generation back to the grid.

joe_the_user• 4 years ago

A fair portion of school districts already contract their buses to First Student and similar bus companies. And if this company were to raise it's rates drastically, the districts could switch to First Student.

coryrc2• 4 years ago

She said they were getting rid of their "~1.4 up-front cost" diesel-electric hybrid buses - because the real TCO was considerably worse

In my city, the original hybrids used Toyota Prius batteries and deep cycled them, which they weren't designed for, killing them and requiring regular replacements. That couldn't have been good for the budget.

michael1999• 4 years ago

It is a different calculation for the school board. For them, the costs of retraining staff, retooling a shop, increasing parts inventory are all big costs. Plus the risk of buying a bunch of lemons.

Leasing them with performance guarantees moves not just the costs, but also the risks to a specialist better suited to carrying them.

I don’t know if this firm is legit, but the deal could make sense.

sanp4• 4 years ago

I still don't get that TCO for EV is higher than Diesel.

On the consumer side, let's look at Tesla Model Y vs. Lexus RX 350. I am using "premium" makes on both sides of this equations. If we want to go with a cheaper ICE then it should be compared with a cheaper EV. Idea being, there is a reasonable comparison where EV comes out ahead on TCO.

Cost / mile: $0.04 vs. $0.10 Difference in purchase cost: $55K (base model Lexus) vs $59K (base model). Include $7500 Fed Credit this comes to ~$56K (assuming a 35% marginal tax rate) Average miles per year: 12K. So fuel savings of ~$720 Even assuming a very generous cost of capital even TCO over 2 years beats ICE. That's before maintenance costs (which seem to be lower for EV).

gregshap• 4 years ago

Tax credits are dollar for dollar reduction in taxes owed. There's no reason to apply a marginal tax rate.

sanp4• 4 years ago

Not sure I follow. The effective benefit of this tax break is different based on your tax bracket. So, we should be using the marginal tax rate.

xxpor4• 4 years ago

A tesla won't get the tax credit any more (they've sold too many cars). Unless that's changed with one of the covid packages.

meragrin_• 4 years ago

Doubt it. Whenever EVs have been mentioned, it has been specifically about union shops. Tesla does not have a union so they are evil.

aaronax• 4 years ago

I guess you have shown that in the luxury segment the TCO comes out better for EVs. Many people are not buying $50k+ luxury vehicles. Care to run an estimate for something like what I was buying a year ago? I was in the market for a loaded 5 year old vehicle with 60-80k miles for $10-13k (Dodge Dart for example, also liked a few Ford Fusion options). There were options like this available, though I happened to stumble upon the apocryphal 13 year old 175k miles $1,000 Honda and went with that.

rootusrootus7• 4 years ago

When I leased our Bolt, the retail price was $23K. Costs me 1.7 cents a mile in fueling costs. It is a good bit nicer than an 80K Dodge Dart, of course, but it's a data point. I also have time-of-use rates, which helps.

Anyway. Assuming 27 mpg for the Dart (this is what Fuelly says average Dart owners experience) and $4.67 gasoline (the US average from a few days ago), should cost around 17 cents a mile in gasoline. Assuming an average of 14.8 cents per kWh (the US average from February) and 3 miles per kWh (somewhat conservative, but close enough) for the Bolt, you'd be looking at 5 cents per mile in electricity.

Not a perfect comparison, the Bolt would be brand new with a warranty, etc, but at least it's not a luxury EV comparison, just an appliance car like a Dart. You'd break even on costs at 76K miles.

Of course, at that point the Bolt has just reached the mileage the Dart started at, and so it will quickly pull ahead in TCO. If you do a lot of road trips you might not like it, but if you primarily drive in the city you will really like not having to stop once a week to get gas.

clomond• 4 years ago

TCOs for individual consumers will be vastly different depending on the parameters of the situation, with particular impact driven by volume of miles driven annually.

Due to this, commercial fleets in my view have a much clearer picture here than personal vehicle decisions. This is also particularly driven by personal vehicle purchases being driven less by “TCO” in a strict sense but rather “what is my monthly payment”.

sanp4• 4 years ago

That’s fair. TCO decisions are probably more relevant in a commercial context.

akira2501• 4 years ago

How many Diesel repair shops are there vs. heavy duty EV vehicle repair shops?

Symbiote2• 4 years ago

Plenty, according to the presentation linked elsewhere in this discussion.

Cummins (the major manufacturer of engines, generators etc) will service the high voltage parts of the bus.

itsoktocry2• 4 years ago

I am using "premium" makes on both sides of this equations

I guess, but a "premium" Model Y doesn't have any features that a far lesser ICE doesn't have, with inferior build quality. That's kind of the point. A premium Honda, VW or Toyota SUV are better comparisons, and substantially cheaper. Of course, that makes the TCO much more competitive...

sanp4• 4 years ago

We can compare these ICEs to a Mach-e or an ID.4 or an Ioniq 5. Build quality on these is pretty comparable to premium ICE models from these manufactures.

nickysielicki• 4 years ago

In what world is the maintenance cost for a fleet of EV busses going to be less than that of a diesel? There are two orders of magnitude more diesel mechanics than people qualified to work on EV drivetrains.

slfnflctd• 4 years ago

I think the argument is that EVs will require vastly less maintenance, which makes sense on paper. I'm not sure how well that will bear out in the near to mid term, though, as these are new designs which haven't been put through the paces yet.

It's a pretty big transportation sector we're talking about (half a million of these buses in the US), so it will not be a fast transition and early adopters will be paying higher costs than later ones to iron out the kinks. Most districts are probably waiting for someone else to try it out first.

ajford4• 4 years ago

There's far less going on in a normal EV drivetrain, which kinda supports the lower maintenance cost.

Fewer fluids required, just your differential and some coolant for the motors really.

Given the specialization of parts, it's far more likely that any performed maintenance is going to be more of a swap for known-good parts and sending them off to the home-office for reconditioning.

fasteddie310032• 4 years ago

I believe batteries and electric motors can replace almost all applications of gas engines. However, diesel engines still are a step too far now IMO. Most people have never operated a diesel engine. Their efficiency is very impressive. My 7,000 lbs truck with a Cummins diesel engine gets better MPGs than my partner's 4,000 lbs Mini Cooper Countryman.

danans3• 4 years ago

Most people have never operated a diesel engine. Their efficiency is very impressive.

All else equal (vehicle class, size, performance, driving style), the operating cost per mile of an EV is 1/4 to 1/2 the operating cost per mile of a diesel or gasoline vehicle, even in states with very expensive electricity like California or Hawaii.

ilikeatari3• 4 years ago

Is there a specific data set you are referencing? How about other components like Ownership and Support?

bsder2• 4 years ago

Except that a school bus tends to operate a diesel in its worst conditions.

Lots of idling. Lots of low RPM operation. Lots of stop and start wasting a lot of energy into the brakes.

A school bus is practically engineered to be an EV propaganda piece.

Animats• 4 years ago

Right. Plus it travels a known number of miles per day, and recharges at the same place each day.

(Although, field trips?)

jtlienwis• 4 years ago

How much will they weigh compared to a Diesel bus? Road damage is to the fourth power of axle weight. Any cost savings may be just shifted to the road department for fixing pot holes. I think the VW EV is almost twice the weight of a same size ICE car. 16x the road damage. Plus, how much damage when this EV bus slides on the ice and hits something? Twice the damage if twice the weight.

Gracana2• 4 years ago

What is your truck? RAM 3500s with Cummins diesels come in 7000lb configurations, but we're talking ~15mpg, nowhere close to a countryman.

fasteddie310032• 4 years ago

My 03 Ram 2500 gets 24 MPG

PaulHoule3• 4 years ago

I ride on an electric bus a few times a week..

https://tcatbus.com/its-electric-on-the-ithaca-commons/

jillesvangurp2• 4 years ago

Plenty of electric buses driving around in Berlin where I live as well. Very nice when I bike through town. Nothing worse than getting stuck behind a stinking old diesel engine.

Shenzen in China switched all of their city buses to electric a few years ago. They have tens of thousands of them driving around there.

elihu8• 4 years ago

Apparently there's an important patent on lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries that expires next month (on April 27th). I'm hoping that changes the economics on batteries and that LFPs become cheap and abundant, and widely available from a variety of manufacturers that aren't located in China.

LFP seems like the obvious choice for large vehicles like buses unless there's some reason to really need to optimize for range. In schoolbuses especially, it would be good to use a kind of battery that's much less likely to catch on fire.

speedgoose2• 4 years ago

Is safety a criteria for school bus in USA? I thought it was only cost since the design is from the last century and many bus don’t even have seatbelts.

xxpor4• 4 years ago

Seat belts have been required in some states for decades at this point. We had them on buses when I was in elementary school 20 years ago, in NJ.

Now... getting kids to actually use them is a different matter.

jws• 4 years ago

The NHTSA recognizes that large busses are not cars and use a different solution.

Large school buses are heavier and distribute crash forces differently than passenger cars and light trucks do. Because of these differences, bus passengers experience much less crash force than those in passenger cars, light trucks, and vans.

NHTSA decided the best way to provide crash protection to passengers of large school buses is through a concept called “compartmentalization.” This requires that the interior of large buses protect children without them needing to buckle up. Through compartmentalization, children are protected from crashes by strong, closely-spaced seats that have energy-absorbing seat backs.

Statistics bear this out, taking a school bus to school is about 70 times more likely to deliver a student safely. In this context, 70 is huge.

kube-system5• 4 years ago

School busses have a ton of safety features -- just with a different strategy than is applied to cars. Part of the reason many don't have seat belts is because they are also designed to have safety features that work without seatbelts. The passengers are rowdy kids who might not always wear their seatbelts, so while adding them might increase protection in some cases, a safety design that primarily relies on seatbelts might not actually be a great idea.

US school busses are heavy and sit very high. Busses can be hit by cars with little force imparted to the occupants. The most dangerous thing about school busses is the risk it poses to the other drivers that hit it: https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Cra...

missedthecue• 4 years ago

There have been a ton of DOT and NHTSA studies that have shown that seatbelts don't keep children that much safer during accidents that involve school busses, because the children are high off the ground, busses don't move at very high speeds, 48 children wearing seatbelts makes a firefighters rescue job 100x harder, etc...

bpodgursky• 4 years ago

IIRC the conclusion was that requiring seat belts slows down the loading / unloading process and decreases ridership enough that more kids will actually get hurt when their parents drive them to school instead (since cars are far more dangerous to riders than giant heavy slow-moving busses).

elihu8• 4 years ago

When it comes to batteries, I can't imagine safety not being a major design consideration. EV fires are maybe exaggerated a bit in the media because of the novelty whereas ICE vehicle fires aren't as newsworthy, but they're still a thing that can happen and could potentially be very destructive and hazardous especially on something with a huge battery pack like a bus. Using a kind of battery that tends not to burst into flames if ill-treated seems like a good idea.

sremani2• 4 years ago

I do not know if we are in a commodity super-cycle but Li price is brrrrrrr.

https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=...

The days of falling battery prices in dollar terms are over.

pg_bot• 4 years ago

I think you are underestimating the ingenuity of humans. Shortages can lead to new, more efficient ways of doing things. High prices are going to encourage more lithium production, or research into perfect substitutes. It's highly unlikely that in a decade battery prices will be higher than they are today.

coryrc2• 4 years ago

Lithium is a tiny fraction of battery cost.

scythe3• 4 years ago

Lithium gives you about 10 kWh per kg, actually a little better than that:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-much-lithium-li-ion-vehic...

So, at the current elevated spot price, Li represents about 5% of the sticker price of a lithium battery. Plus, supply responses to demand growth in minerals tend to be relatively slow, which means that a short term price rise doesn't necessarily suggest a shortage of availability.

xxpor4• 4 years ago

Yes, that's a great point. Even if you ignore the usual idle time between the morning and afternoon runs, I have to imagine a range of 150-200 miles would cover ~95% of use cases. The bus problem therefore should be much easier than the long haul truck problem. Plus, there's no trailer so you could run the battery pack the entire length of the bus.

erosenbe06• 4 years ago

One problem is that 'diesel outages' on school nights are extremely rare or nonexistent. Maybe deliveries are late or pumps break but it seems like a solved problem. Electric trains are also a solved problem and are hardened from many power outages too.

Whereas some work needs to be done to harden the infrastructure at the school district level to avoid electric bus outages.

Gwypaas• 4 years ago

They work really well for city buses also, although they need some charging at the ends. Still have a sweet spot in regards to range though even though the latest generation allows for high capacity buses. They needed to rework a bunch of lines to fit in the envelope.

https://www.electricitygoteborg.se/en/news/improved-urban-en...

Also helps that Volvo is headquartered in Goteborg, so always eager to try new things. The first "prototype" style BEV bus line opened early 2015.

mardifoufs• 4 years ago

LiFePo batteries are already getting produced in huge numbers in China and are very cheap even here in the west. Could the Chinese LiFePo products legally be imported if they were using patented tech? Or is it a specific variation of LiFePo that is patented, and could make the batteries better?

Because at 150-250$/kWh retail price it's going to be extremely hard for local manufacturers to compete in the market against established Chinese manufacturers that can already make state of the art, high quality batteries at insane volumes.

elihu8• 4 years ago

I'm not 100% sure what the situation is, but I think the issue is that if some car manufacturer tried to import a large quantity of LFP cells from China they might be sued if they don't pay the patent licensing fees. Thus the price of LFP cells in China isn't the same as the price of LFP cells anywhere else purchased through legitimate channels. (I'm not sure if the cheap-ish cells you can get on AliExpress are paying those royalties or if they're kind of flying under the radar.)

I'm hoping to see sub-$100 per kwh LFP cells sometime soon in the U.S. through some channel that ordinary people can order from. It would be a huge boon for EV conversion if the batteries weren't hugely expensive. I think that's probably attainable. LFP batteries aren't fundamentally expensive, you just need to have good automation, cheap energy, and economies of scale. The input materials are relatively cheap. China's main advantage besides the patent thing is that they've been quietly building their battery manufacturing capabilities and supply chains for a couple decades, and it's hard to compete with that.

dont__panic• 4 years ago

I'm curious how they perform in cold conditions. Where I grew up, a solid 50% of the school year was at or below freezing regularly. We really worked those bus heaters -- you know the type, under a few seats scattered around the bus. Curiously, it doesn't seem that buses use heat from the engine, like most ICE vehicles, for heat. Instead, I'm pretty sure they were just using power from the motor for electric heating elements with fans. Given that an electric bus could easily fit an enormous battery slab under the seating, I wonder if electric buses could be even better than ICE buses in cold conditions -- barring the obvious issues with battery efficiency in cold.

Mountain_Skies3• 4 years ago

Wonder if radiant floor heating would be a good solution. Adding a warm air blower near the front to counteract cold air intrusion from opening and closing the door could help keep the interior of the bus a nice constant temperature.

elihu8• 4 years ago

LFP batteries don't handle below-freezing temperatures very well, but that could be mitigated by using insulation and water cooling/heating depending on the time of year. Also maybe hooking them up to a pre-heater system that gets the batteries up to temperature before their route begins. (Sort of like those oil pan heaters they use in really cold climates.)

Cabin heating could be done with a heat pump for more efficiency, I suppose. Heating could consume quite a bit of power, but I suppose compared to the energy required to move a school bus around it's probably fairly minor.

chillingeffect• 4 years ago

Nice thing about this application is the predictability of the routes. And compared to city buses the ratio of time driving per regen is larger. I assume drain and recharge puts wear on the batteries?

ilikeatari3• 4 years ago

Personally I am very exited about it but we lack data that does allow us to do proper TCO comparison of ICE vs EV on the heavy duty side. Also how does V2G economics actually work if you are trying to optimize for the lowest charging rate (usually during night to avoid peak)? If you are in V2G mode after 6 pm i assume you would need to start charging at night during cheapest rates and assure that the bus is charged by 5 am. Wouldn't this require 1 to 1 charger to bus ratio as you might not have enough time to swap? Wouldn't then infrastructure costs(chargers that are build and concrete around it) skyrocket?

JumpCrisscross2• 4 years ago

we lack data that does allow us to do proper TCO comparison of ICE vs EV on the heavy duty side

These districts have transferred that risk to the provider. Which seems reasonable.

ilikeatari3• 4 years ago

Yes, makes sense from the districts perspective, but I meant from sustainability of the business model perspective.

sokoloff2• 4 years ago

Any overnight charging solution almost surely needs a 1-to-1 ratio anyway, because you're probably not going to pay an expensive and unreliable human to plug and unplug buses overnight every night when a charger will last 10+ years. You're already paying the bus driver to park the bus and to drive it away in the morning. Add a minute of bus driver labor to plug it in and a minute to unplug it in the morning.

colincooke• 4 years ago

Due to the usage patterns of the bus fleet I wonder if they could be used for some vehicle to grid [1] power bank on weekends/during weekday downtime? It might shorten the lifetime of the batteries themselves but would be a nice additional revenue stream.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid

ElevenLathe• 4 years ago

These services are already outsourced in many school districts, with the district doing nothing more than contracting out for certain service levels and writing a check. Presumably if it pencils out, those contractors will switch to electric without even needing to consult the board of education.

anonymouse0082• 4 years ago

Do you mind pointing to a few companies who offer said contract services? Is it mostly a metropolitan thing?

kasey_junk• 4 years ago

Chicago Public Schools has dozens of bus contractors. Here is one that is relatively big: https://www.unitedquick.com/

You can find bus contracts given to the owners of single busses though those firms do t have large web presences.

MengerSponge2• 4 years ago

The secondary costs of running a diesel fleet are also huge! Diesel motors generate a substantial amount of fine particulate that is unhealthy for anybody, and particularly unhealthy for children.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC121970/

Even if an electric fleet is the same cost, changing over would save tons of money and alleviate tons of suffering. It's the right thing to do for any ethical reason you can consider.

Unless, I suppose, you're intent on making the poor suffer. Diesel buses are very cost-effective at accomplishing that.

jjtheblunt2• 4 years ago

(Disclaimer: have driven pure electric for going on 7.5 years)

It may be more complex: electricity generation is very dirty in some regions, such as where coal is burned.

Is it more dirty than diesel emissions? I have no idea, but old diesels were nasty.

sp332• 4 years ago

It's much cleaner, even after accounting for losses in electricity transport and storage. Power plants are just much more efficient than mobile internal combustion engines.

shiftpgdn• 4 years ago

Yes because the coal burning is done at a central location with fairly advanced technology to capture dirty hydrocarbons. The tailpipe is spreading soot all over.

MengerSponge2• 4 years ago

No, it is not more dirty than diesel emissions. Coal plants are stationary, so they can install huge scrubbing apparatus. Diesels have to drag whatever cleanup mechanism they have installed with them, which is inherently limiting.

Also, those coal plants aren't parked outside primary schools idling, and schoolkids aren't spending hours sitting around their smokestacks.

Don't get me wrong: Coal is dirty as sin and radioactive as hell. Coal delenda est.

kemiller• 4 years ago

Engineering Explained did the math: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RhtiPefVzM

Spoiler: Well-to-wheels, BEV cars are better than the best gas cars (top end prius) even if the source electricity is 100% coal.

The best is still not driving, but it's a step in the right direction.

Ourgon• 4 years ago

Is it more dirty than diesel emissions? I have no idea, but old diesels were nasty.

When comparing old diesels to old coal power plants the power plants win by being more efficient but both belch out a lot of pollution. They also have the advantage of burning coal, a fuel which is available in abundance and does not need as much processing as crude oil does to be used in diesel engines.

When comparing old diesels to modern coal power plants this is true at an even higher level since those modern power plants filter out fly ash and are more efficient.

When comparing modern diesels to old coal-fired power plants the diesels win by being less polluting and possibly on terms of efficiency.

Modern diesels versus modern coal power plants goes to the power plants again since these win on terms of efficiency - especially when using combined heat & power - over the diesels.

wolverine8763• 4 years ago

We can make power plants cleaner, and generally we do (but not nearly fast enough).

philjohn• 4 years ago

Electricity generation CAN be done cleanly, and should in the future continue to get greener.

ICE cars will always give off pollution.

zamalek• 4 years ago

The thing is that we're going to burn coal no matter what.

jjtheblunt2• 4 years ago

downvotes to ask a question? what has HN become?

fiftyfifty2• 4 years ago

Even in terms of primary cost, diesel buses are expensive to maintain. My FIL was a mechanic for the local school district for 15 years, so I got a little insight into that aspect of the district. Our medium sized school district, 4 big high schools and all the feeder schools for them, employs around 6 full time mechanics plus their manager with all the equipment and the facility to work on the buses year round plus parts etc. It's not difficult to imagine that cost alone adds at least $1 million to our district's budget annually. In addition they have to have some percentage of extra buses because they are constantly rotating buses out for maintenance. They also have to have at least one extra bus and driver on standby every day because diesel buses breakdown regularly during a route and they have to go out with a second bus and pick up the kids and finish the route.

So if a district can outsource part of that maintenance cost, and electric buses prove to be lower maintenance and more reliable that their diesel counterparts, there are significant savings to be had for the school districts.

VBprogrammer2• 4 years ago

diesel buses breakdown regularly

In comparison to what? Diesel engines in commercial vehicles are extremely reliable. It certainly could be possible for an electric bus to be more reliable, they certainly have less points of mechanical wear. However, there are a lot of power electronics going into charging their batteries and delivering the battery power to the motors.

lttlrck• 4 years ago

My daughter takes an electric bluebird to school. It has broken down numerous times this year, it has even stopped mid-route due to low battery (no idea who's to blame for that). Nevertheless it's nice to see progress and things will get better.

elihu8• 4 years ago

They also have to have at least one extra bus and driver on standby every day because diesel buses breakdown regularly during a route and they have to go out with a second bus and pick up the kids and finish the route.

I distinctly remember being one of those kids that would have to be picked up in another bus every once in awhile. This was before cell phones, so the bus driver had to walk to the nearest house (this was out in the country) and ask to use the phone. I think we had a problem bus for a few months where this happened fairly regularly until they swapped it out for a different one.

One time a passing vehicle kicked up a rock that took out the windshield. Nobody was seriously injured, but there was a fair bit of broken glass.

Broken_Hippo3• 4 years ago

My father was a business manager for a few different school corporations. In at least one of them, the busses were all used - none were purchased new. It just wasn't worth it, and much cheaper to simply have an extra bus. You needed the mechanics regardless just to maintain them. You needed an extra driver anyway as well because people get sick. These aren't really the costs you are leading folks to believe they are, but part of overall cost savings.

One of the most wasteful (and expensive) things about school busses is that they are only used for school, which means they sit idle for much of the day. My father tried to work with at least one city to combine city busses with school busses - but state law (Indiana) forbid this since school busses were required by law to be the classic yellow with black markings.

I'll also add that outsourcing isn't without challenges, and the employees are often worse off. (I don't remember as many specifics right now: My father, who died 9 or 10 years ago, generally worked with custodial and cafeteria outsourcing.)

mtgx• 4 years ago

Diesel motors generate a substantial amount of fine particulate that is unhealthy for anybody, and particularly unhealthy for children.

This is one of the biggest issues with US' private healthcare system.

The U.S. government just doesn't feel that direct "cost" in the same way countries that have to pay to fix the health of their citizens do. This is why you see a lot of other countries put higher taxes on sugar, gasoline, diesel, etc. Because they see a direct correlation between the consumption of those things and them having to invest more in their national healthcare system out of their tax money.

Meanwhile, in the US, since it's the citizens that pay out of pocket, that money still goes into the economy, so it's kind of all the same to the government whether or not they get sick or not. They may notice some correlation in the long-term, but the negative effects of these things are not nearly as urgent to the government.

DaltonCoffee• 4 years ago

Canadian has free healthcare and still has diesel public/school buses

Barrin92• 4 years ago

Very true and also the reason for the exploding costs of the education system people complain about. In countries where universities run on public budgets you won't see exploding administrations and degree inflation because the state has a direct incentive to keep costs low rather than handing out loans that go to private institutions.

Was honestly surprised when I saw that the rate of university graduation in the US is twice as high as it is here in Germany.

BurningFrog• 4 years ago

I really doubt this causation, for a few reasons.

1. Everyone gets sick and dies. Dying a bit earlier from diesel probably doesn't cost more than whatever you would have died from later.

2. These other countries also have government funded pension system. If people live longer that's an added expense! If you do the cynical math, government finances are best if people die of something cheap soon after they retire.

erosenbe06• 4 years ago

Nope, about 1/3 of Americans have Medicaid or Medicare. At least 6% of all gdp is government dollars in healthcare, probably more.

stephen9992• 4 years ago

Huh? Most of Europe has socialized medicine and they have a ton more diesels and thus air pollution than the US.

lenkite• 4 years ago

Lots of nations have public health-care and millions of diesel motors.

Amezarak2• 4 years ago

This is simply false.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56571

Federal Subsidies. In CBO and JCT’s projections, net federal subsidies (that is, the cost of all the subsidies minus the taxes and penalties) in 2021 for insured people are $920 billion, or 4.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

The US federal government (that is, excluding state and county governments, which also spend money on this) spends 920 billion dollars a year on health insurance and care. This also excludes the VA system (~200 billion), which does cover dependents. So that's 1.1 trillion per year by the federal government alone. To take California for an example, you can add another 100 billion in state spending on Medi-Cal. It's also not uncommon for counties and cities to operate and run their own hospital systems.

asdff2• 4 years ago

Do school districts still use diesel? CNG seems pretty popular these days.

Mountain_Skies3• 4 years ago

Likely the CNG buses are purchased by wealthy districts and the less well off districts purchase the used diesel buses at a discount.

luke2m• 4 years ago

I'm in high school in the USA and am on multiple interscholastic sports teams, and am also interested in transportation. I have yet to see a single CNG school bus

bluGill4• 4 years ago

For city buses. Schools are mostly diesel from what I've seen. You need special infrastructure to fill CNG, which limits trips.

hedora3• 4 years ago

California's greatly surpasseed the misery of their old diesel fleets. In a bid to "reduce carbon emissions" (really: cut budgets in the way that screwed over parents as much as possible), they simply eliminated most school busses.

Then, the state government claimed this reduced carbon emissions, ignoring the externalities associated with doubling most parents' commutes for 18+ years.

ReaLNero• 4 years ago

Stating the obvious here, but eliminating school buses and thus making people have to drive their kids to school would INCREASE carbon emissions. So the statement is both factually incorrect and a shameless attempt at misdirection.

GrumpyNl• 4 years ago

A better alternative is the trolley bus, no batteries needed. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-51034523

jabroni_salad• 4 years ago

that's excellent for city busses that run all day with good frequency, but I would not say so for school busses, whose reason to exist is to collect students that live far away from the school for one specific commute only. Should the municipality really build out overhead powerlines for 20 miles of cornfields just for one passenger needing only 2 trips per day, possibly less if that student has after-school activities?

tpmx• 4 years ago

Shorter routes and longer idle periods mean that school buses can be charged at lower intensities over longer periods of time than commercial vehicles that have to charge quickly to get back on the road

Most relevant sentence in this article.

aurizon3• 4 years ago

A niche opened up, buy ebusses, lock school boards into 10-20 year contracts to save 10-20% on fuels costs and have zero capital/maintenance costs. The bus company lives on the ~~60-70% fuels cost saving and finances the bus fleet. Typical contract to see to various users with short terms viewpoints. I would like to see what the board savings are in a sample of a lease - most will be under NDA's I expect?

asdff2• 4 years ago

Niche is already exploited. School boards have already been contracting out busing. Diesel/CNG contractors will just retool and charge more for green tax to school boards that want to pay.

rootusrootus7• 4 years ago

most will be under NDA's I expect?

What are the odds that school districts are even legally allowed to sign such an NDA?

aurizon3• 4 years ago

Hard to say. Most contracts are public access files. but I am not sure if there are redactions for competitive reasons?

me_me_mu_mu3• 4 years ago

When I was a kid like 15 years ago we'd walk to school if it was close. I took the bus until middle school which was like 1 mile away.

I hope car usage goes down, especially a single person driving a big SUV. Walk, or bike, to where you need to go. Less cars, more safe.

mike_d2• 4 years ago

I'm glad your parents were in an economic situation where you could live walking distance from school in a neighborhood safe enough to do so. Only 9% of students in the US live within a reasonable walking distance.

lucastheisen• 4 years ago

what is a reasonable walking distance? 9% seems like a surprisingly small number.

me_me_mu_mu3• 4 years ago

My parents were poor immigrants (mom couldn’t work legally due to immigration status), But yeah I’m glad I had other friends from my apartment complex that I could walk to school with.

You ever been to inner city? That’s probably where that 9% is from, unless you’ve got more stats you can pull up because it seems your only perspective is numbers you read on theatlantic or something along with your latte.

With less cars on the road as time goes on, I hope walking and public transit becomes a viable option. You ever seen kids going on the metro busses or light rail? I’ve only ever seen this in cities, and never in suburbs where I live now, except the kids who live across the street from the school.

moltke• 4 years ago

I think car usage is likely to go up unless the crime in cities is dealt with. For that to happen we have to stop calling constructive peace keeping work "racist" though and that seems unlikely.

mostly_harmless• 4 years ago

For those questioning the feasibility, 100% electric school buses are already on the road in Montreal. I see them frequently, and they seem to handle our crappy roads and winters fine.

wolverine8763• 4 years ago

Why would electric buses have more problems on winter roads than ICE buses?

ajford4• 4 years ago

Cold air impacting heath & capacity on the Li batteries, perhaps? Lithium batts tend to be finicky about their temperatures. Even my PHEV chevy volt de-rates the capacity if the ambient air temps hit less than 36*F.

krallja• 4 years ago

It’s cold in the winter.

roamerz• 4 years ago

Cheaper for the school districts themselves maybe. I’d like to see an honest article that included the overall cost to taxpayers as well.

guerby• 4 years ago

For those curious about EV bus including maintenance vs diesel EEVBlog has one episode on a private company switching to EV:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKs3LytrICA

caseysoftware• 4 years ago

Busses as a Service from a venture-backed company in a ridiculously volatile market..

What happens if/when they run out of funding?

Having a business productivity app go out of business with an "amazing journey" post is irritating but there are 50 other apps that will take their place. Introducing "as a service" here where there are serious legal and even civil rights issues in play is radically different.

bobthepanda• 4 years ago

I mean, this is how aircraft and trains (and yes, even buses) get leased these days, particularly in the EU.

Vehicle depreciation is a massive headache.

octoberfranklin• 4 years ago

Those fleet lessors are not the manufacturers. If the lessor goes belly-up, you can lease the exact same model of plane/train/etc from one of their competitors.=

If Boeing's financial stability depended on the sucess of one particular aircraft lessor, that would be a huge problem.

olivermarks6• 4 years ago

'Out of the roughly 500,000 school buses in the U.S., only about 0.2 percent — just over 1,000 — were electric as of the end of 2021'

I can see EV buses being practical for future urban short distance pickup and drop off, but the longer haul rural routes, especially in cold climates, seem a long way off to the EV obsessed as a solution to anything. Huge subsidies and grants may seduce a few school boards but the reality is diesel loads replaced by EV are no where near ready for prime time.

What could immediately help the local pollution aspects of EV heavy vehicles is some sort of tire particulate collection device to stop spread. Tire pollution is a huge problem that is probably more important than where energy is obtained from near or far https://www.greencarcongress.com/2020/03/20200308-emissionsa...

rootusrootus7• 4 years ago

Average total route length is 75 miles per day. A Blue Bird electric bus, as a comparison point, has a range of 120 miles. So not all routes will be feasible with that bus, but a large number will be a perfect fit.

rconti• 4 years ago

So what you're saying is, there's a huge market opportunity between "0.2%" and "everything other than longer haul routes in cold climates"?

olivermarks6• 4 years ago

That 'market' is already being served by existing vehicles. If we are interested in reducing pollution read the link I posted.

tigeba• 4 years ago

Just as an interesting note, our school district has switched the entire fleet (around 150) to CNG. This has supposedly reduced opex substantially over diesel. Also a huge reduction in particulates. Probably not as clean as EV but an improvement . Our district owns all their vehicles, but I believe this is not common.

mleonhard• 4 years ago

Zum is an electric schoolbus provider mentioned in the article. Their headquarters in near SF, in Redwood City. They're hiring engineers:

https://www.ridezum.com/corporate-hq-hiring.html

It looks like they're modernizing the whole student transportation process: apps for parents/drivers/school admins, dynamic routing, monitoring, and metrics. They claim 20% reduction in student commute times. That's a big quality of life improvement.

I think the job would be quite interesting: geo, real-time, mobile, web, embedded, physical infrastructure, optimization, diverse user base, and many human factors. They're well-funded so probably pay decently.

The office photos show a large open plan, which could be an acoustic hellscape, like Google SF Spear St. If the space has enough sound-absorbing panels and dividers and quiet floors then it could be ok. Can any of you comment on the work environment?

graycat• 4 years ago

Yes, without any really careful data, I've guessed that electric could be cheaper. But already??? Really???? Or are we talking some subsidies???

So, in the OP, now I see:

"A 2020 study conducted by Atlas Public Policy for Washington state indicated that falling battery costs and rising manufacturing volumes should bring electric school buses within total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) parity with fossil-fueled buses by 2030."

Hmm ... 2030???

Then I notice:

"While most of its projects have started small, CEO Duncan McIntyre sees the Montgomery County project — now at 25 electric buses and set to expand to 326 over the next four years — as the model for the future."

So, from

100 * 25 / 326 = 7.669%

we're talking so far a little less than 8% of the fleet. So full EV (electric vehicle) has a way to go.

Now I'm wondering ....

Now I notice near the beginning:

"Billions of dollars of federal and state grants and incentives are flowing to U.S. school districts to help them electrify their fleets."

"Billions"? Now I understand!

Same as usual: (1) Always look for the hidden agenda. (2) Follow the money.

Next, the bus fleet is in Montgomery County, Maryland. I used to live there. Relatively wealthy place! Lot of money! Lot of interest in social issues! Close to DC, the main money pot!

Next, what's this with a fleet of 326 busses??? What the ...??? So many busses? Are they in the school business or the bus business? Sounds like could run quite a good school system just for the costs of 326 busses. In my school, grades 1-12, there were no busses. 97+% of the kids went on to college -- not a bad school system. The year before me, three guys went to Princeton and two of them ran against some third guy for President of the Freshman Class. In my year, MIT came recruiting. The guy who did go to MIT -- I beat him by a little on the Math SAT. Must have been an OK school. Kids got to and from school on their own, rain, shine, hot, cold, ice, snow, or clear. One good way was to WALK. Another was a bicycle. But, no school busses.

Want to save money on 326 Diesel busses? Good. Here's a way, and get to save on not just 8% of the fleet but all of it, and get the savings tomorrow and don't have to wait until 2030. Uh, and save $billions. How to do this magic, more amazing than anything electrical??? Easy: Junk all the busses. Done.

Lesson: No matter how productive the US economy might be from automation or whatever, various interest groups can get with government and waste the gains. E.g., there in Monkey County, a lot of the people were, likely are, living in apartments they RENT. They'd be MUCH better off OWNING a single family detached house.

Next, I just got a direct message from Darwin: The birth rate in Monkey County is less than 2 per woman. Sooooo, the population is shrinking. The people of Monkey County who want busses instead of schooling are going -- I have the word right here -- extinct. If the government were wasting less, there could be more motherhood, and the moms could work out how to get the kids to/from school without 326 busses.

tormock• 4 years ago

at 4 miles per gallon and skyrocketing gas prices, it doesn't surprise me....

buggythebug• 4 years ago

Have met the owner. Stand up guy

HelixEndeavor• 4 years ago

School buses are one of those areas I'm surprised EV's haven't completely consumed already. They basically play to every single strength EVs have.

dillondoyle• 4 years ago

Great news. Buses and government vehicles are perfect for electric. They go back to dedicated parking lots perfect for charging.

We desperately need to force electric vehicles for the upcoming USPS replacements too.

The funding / reform bill passed, but as far as I can tell it does not mandate or address the fleet. DeJoy said he was replacing with gas. There was a proposed bill but I can't find any recent news on it.

Ridiculous to spend that much money on 100% custom built vehicles that are gas powered.

clarge1120• 4 years ago

Do schools rent busses today, or is this new?

andrewallbright• 4 years ago

I get a little suspicious. Are we comparing both solutions at scale, or just one at scale and the other at a smaller scale?

The question boils down to: how many people are both systems currently moving. What would it take to build up the other system to operate at the first system's scale?

humanrebar• 4 years ago

What is the range on these?

In rural area, yellow busses need to travel for two hours morning and night. And for extra-curricular activities, like transportation to away games, drives can last five hours or more.

sagarm• 4 years ago

Most Americans don't live in rural areas.

coward123• 4 years ago

This topic triggers me a bit because along with rants about CRT, masking, book banning, etc one of the buried topics among the loonies who have berated and attacked our school boards was that they were against electric buses. This is despite good info at least in our district that making the move would yield considerable savings over the service life. So point being, if you are following what's happening in your school district and there's an active group of nutjobs, don't be surprised to see them lash out against this too. I truly about fell out of my chair in shock the first time I heard one of these fools go off on a rant about masks that culminated in a monolog about electric buses taking away our freedom.

xyzzy21• 4 years ago

If this is merely subsidized electric, it says nothing about long-term sustainability of choosing it instead of diesel. Thermodynamically electricity is dubious at best - you have 50% efficiency off the top that can never be eliminated - at least with heat engines you have the option of higher compression or temperatures or pressure to boost beyond 50%. Electrical never can.

US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel

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