To Really Cut Emissions, We Need Electric Buses, Not Just Electric Cars 491
An anonymous reader writes: All the EV attention these days is going to Tesla and other sedan manufacturers, but this article makes the case that it's far more important to switch our buses over to electric power than our cars. "Last year, according to the American Public Transportation Association, buses hauled 5.36 billion passengers. While usage has fallen in recent years, thanks in part to the growth of light rail and subway systems, buses still account for more rides each year than heavy rail, light rail, and commuter rail combined—and for about half of all public transit trips." This, while managing around 4-5 miles per gallon of gas, and public buses usually average about 50,000 miles per year. The electric buses themselves are significantly more expensive, but the difference is made up dramatically lower fuel costs. And there will be difficulties: "The range—up to 30 miles—limits Proterra buses to certain routes, so it's hard for an agency to go all in. Drivers have to be trained to brake and accelerate differently, and to maneuver into the docking stations. And Doran Barnes of Foothill Transit notes that some of the cost advantage of using electricity instead of diesel can dissipate. Electric cars can be charged at night, when power prices are low. But buses have no choice but to recharge in the middle of the day, when utilities often impose higher peak usage rates."
And low-emission transport trucks, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Diesel engines are powerful but they pollute A LOT. And don't forget ships. That bunker fuel many of them burn is NASTY.
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Link [google.com]
Maybe we need to look there... Come on, how much difference will a few million cars make when compared to just one of those ships?
Re:And low-emission transport trucks, too (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the difference is that as a government it's a lot easier to bully consumers than it is to bully large corporations.
Re:And low-emission transport trucks, too (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no bullying. There's ignorance and lack of interest in finding the truth.
I like solar panels for many applications, and support rooftop PV and solar CSP plants. But the current wind energy credits are destroying the USA regional grids.
The credits given for wind turbines are making regional grids to into negative energy costs overnight (more power than needed in the grid, even with all peaking plants shutdown, and wind turbines are still making money because they can pay a little bit of money to deliver electricity to the grid, like paying one dollar to sell a MWh to the grid while making 23 dollars per MWh by the wind credits), results, baseload natural gas, baseload coal, baseload nuclear is getting destroyed, but those are needed when the wind isn't blowing. The USA is shooting itself in the foot with a bazooka.
We need to explain this truth to everyone thinking wind turbines are great.
The credits must be reformulated, such that they are a % of revenues earned from selling that electricity, instead of a fixed value, this way wind turbines would be forced to have large energy storage capacity, so they don't sell into an oversupplied electric grid.
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or unless the US wants to ban gross-polluting ships from its waters and ports
And that is exactly what needs to be done.
Re:And low-emission transport trucks, too (Score:5, Informative)
I heard that the top 16 largest container ships (burning bunker fuel) pollute as much as all of the cars on the road.
That is a wild distortion. It is only true for sulfer emissions. But while sulfer pollution is a problem in a city, it is not a problem at sea, where the emissions fall into the sea and are absorbed. The ocean already contains a hundred trillion tons of sulfer, and the emissions by ships are infinitesimal by comparison.
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Maybe I'm just stupid, but I'd assume the burnt sulfur goes into the air and comes down in the rain when burnt in a ship much like when burnt in a coal plant and where I live the rain blows in from the ocean. You are right about the rain that falls on the ocean but I don't see how you're right when the rain falls on the land.
Re:And low-emission transport trucks, too (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd assume the burnt sulfur goes into the air and comes down in the rain when burnt in a ship much like when burnt in a coal plant
No. Ships have much shorter smoke stacks than power plants, and most modern ships have horizontal funnels that blow the smoke out to the sides. They are designed to keep the smoke low, to prevent it from traveling too far. This is a problem when ships are in port, but that can be prevented by hooking them up to shore power, so they don't need to run their boilers to generate their own electricity.
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Re:And low-emission transport trucks, too (Score:5, Informative)
Ocean going vessels to my understanding have basically no pollution controls on them nor emission standards that they must follow. Consequently they make up some of the worst sources of environmental pollution. Ideally they'd be nuclear powered, but even if they were to implement even basic pollution controls they'd make a world (pun intended) of difference.
They must obey the environmental laws of the port from which they hail. i.e. the flag they fly. This is why huge transport ships will often fly flags of countries that don't even have a port that could harbor the ship. This is where the term "Flag of Convenience" comes from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org]
In recent years however, many ports will refuse ships that don't meet that ports regulations. Some of the ships output was so horrible that places like California would see air pollution levels sky rocket just because a ship was in port. I read an article once described how a small number of those large ships (16?) put more pollution into the air than the combined output of automobiles in the world combined.
Here the guardian describes how they put out more than 50million cars each: http://www.theguardian.com/env... [theguardian.com]
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Ship fuel is the cheapest of the cheap. It's what's left over when all the good stuff is refined out of it. Where do you think it'll go if ships don't use it?
Diesel engines are also more efficient than petrol. Poorly tuned or old diesel engines pollute. Modern diesel engines are much better at catching particulates in the exhaust system and also produce less.
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Ship fuel is the cheapest of the cheap. It's what's left over when all the good stuff is refined out of it. Where do you think it'll go if ships don't use it?
Diesel engines are also more efficient than petrol. Poorly tuned or old diesel engines pollute. Modern diesel engines are much better at catching particulates in the exhaust system and also produce less.
No, sorry, Diesel is worse in every way. I work on both kinds of engines. Put a super charger on it and the diesel can get over 40mpg... but the pollutants are still awful. It made a huge difference when the US finally started mandating low sulfur diesel, but not enough. If you count the pollution produced my the refinery (Gas requires more refinement) They come up almost even, but Diesel is still a tad worse.
If you doubt me, go work on a diesel engine and then check your hands when you're done. Do the same
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Perhaps you should move to California? [forcechange.com]
Just because old diesels pump out soot, doesn't mean new ones do too.
Re:And low-emission transport trucks, too (Score:5, Insightful)
No, sorry, Diesel is worse in every way.
Congratulations, you just proved that you have no idea what you're on about. Then you kept going.
I work on both kinds of engines.
So?
Put a super charger on it and the diesel can get over 40mpg
Engines don't have MPG ratings. Cars do.
but the pollutants are still awful
NOx is higher and CO2 is lower per kW/h, soot is about the same but the soot is bigger so it's easier for your cilia to sweep it out of your lungs. Victory, diesel.
If you doubt me, go work on a diesel engine and then check your hands when you're done.
But what does that have to do with the price of tea in china?
Do the same with Gas.
Ah yes, that's a great fucking idea, given that you can often find methanol in gasoline, or MTBE, and both are toxic and readily absorbed through the skin. Why don't you just tell people to shoot themselves up with Dioxin for an encore?
I'm jet black from the solders to my finger tips after I get done on a diesel.
What is with all the morons who won't wear gloves? You should be at worst jet black from the shoulders (I assume) to the wrists. And they also make these things called coveralls.
With diesels, the mechanic gets dirty. With gasoline engines, we all get dirty.
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That is not really true. Read e.g. http://www.cumminseuro6.com/wh... [cumminseuro6.com]
As of January 1, 2014, Euro-6 is standard on all newly sold trucks in the EU. But even the older buses in my city (all diesel except for two diesel hybrid buses) are not really polluting that much. You can get even truck diesel engines clean, if you want to.
I wonder what the potential for fuel savings in *hybrid* buses is. I checked up on this and found an article on the buses my city used: 750,000€ instead of 400,000€ for the bus
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Or, they could use some kind a assist with a sail, and big-ass solar panels.
Re:And low-emission transport trucks, too (Score:4, Insightful)
Or be nuclear powered.
Oh no I didn't?! ;D
But yeah, wind - Can't imagine no-one have thought about that one before!! .. with solar panels :)
Well, we really should be at that stage by now. (Score:4, Insightful)
We should have been working hard at improving nuclear power, and solving its problems, to the point that this would, by now, be a no-brainer. So those polluting diesels are another thing we can blame on the environmentalists that shut down nuclear power research in the '70s.
Re:Well, we really should be at that stage by now. (Score:5, Insightful)
The US Navy has been all-in with Nuclear power. R&D has been non-stop. If they haven't "solved its problems", it's unlikely throwing even more money at it, would do so.
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The US Navy has been using Nuclear power for decades and its worked pretty well for them.
Now if only the rest of us would get on board.
Re:Well, we really should be at that stage by now. (Score:4, Interesting)
Wrong !
In many ways, military and civilian water cooled reactors of today should have been 40 years ago technology.
Basic Nuclear in the USA research pretty much stopped in the late 60s during the Nixon administration.
The really sharp, ambitious nuclear scientists (from the Manhattan project), wanted either metal cooled fast reactors or thorium molten salt reactors.
Nobody wanted a water cooled reactor. A water cooled reactor was the Navy's solution to the Navy's problem with Navy's knowledge set.
Plus lets compare the world's largest Navy nuclear reactor.
The latest nuclear carriers use 2 A1B nuclear reactors, rated at 300MWt each.
And those reactors run around 50% power most of the time.
A full sized civilian reactor usually is 4000MWt (1300-1400 MWe).
Very, very different beasts.
The navy doesn't need inherently safe reactors, they have extremely competent officers running its nuclear reactors.
Civilians need inherently safe, walk away if anything goes bad, reactors.
With molten salts we can built 500-1000MWt reactors that are far safer AND far more efficient than the 4000MWt water cooled reactors.
I have spent over 200 hrs studying lectures, papers, analysis, for molten salt tech.
And why they were never seriously pursued. No technical reasons. Political reasons instead.
While I prefer molten salt reactors over sodium cooled fast reactors, the later are also way safer than water cooled reactors. Killed in the 90s by Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry. By order of big coal and natural gas interests.
If you want nuclear research to restart, we first need to combat the real enemy of nuclear power today which is the public, that was carefully fed lie after lie about nuclear power, and the BIG lie that solar+wind can do the trick (THEY CAN'T).
Re:Well, we really should be at that stage by now. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is the manpower to operate it just doesn't scale well to something as small as a ship. The reactor itself scales just fine and performed admirably (used about 163 pounds of uranium [sandia.gov] or a hair over one gallon, instead of 29 million gallons of fuel oil during its 10 years of operation). But the additional manpower and training needed to operate and maintain a nuclear reactor instead of a diesel engine killed its cost-effectiveness at transporting cargo. You're basically using the same amount of trained staff as needed to operate a reactor to power a small city (a few hundred MW), except you're only powering a ship (74 MW).
Maybe molten salt reactors or some other tech will be easy enough to maintain that nuclear could supplant diesel for cargo ships. But it isn't going to happen with light water reactors. Even the U.S. Navy sees this lower limit, and uses diesel or gas turbine engines in anything as small as a cruiser (the previous Virginia-class cruisers were nuclear, but the current Ticonderoga-class uses gas turbine engines).
Re:Well, we really should be at that stage by now. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is the manpower to operate it just doesn't scale well to something as small as a ship.
Why is it then possible and viable to have nuclear powered submarines but not ships?
Economically, it should not be. Because the value metrics and usage requirements for a submarine are vastly different to those for a ship. Both go on water, but when a submarine is underwater it needs a controlled non-toxic emission propulsion and power system - older and smaller subs use electric batteries, which are charged when on the surface by a diesel engine which exhausts out into the air, so they have very limited underwater endurance. A sub with a nuclear reactor does away with the electric battery element, has no need of diesel engines, so it can stay underwater for months at a time - even to the point where they can if necessary complete an entire tour of duty without breaking the surface of the water.
That ability to stay underwater and (probably) undetected gives the ability to project power into areas and in ways where highly visible surface ships just would not work.
The reason it works is that submarines are not used for economic activity - their value to the Navies that have them falls into the "money is no object" category and profit is irrelevant in the face of security and force projection.
Re:Well, we really should be at that stage by now. (Score:4, Funny)
Why is it then possible and viable to have nuclear powered submarines but not ships?
The navy does not expect its submarines to operate at a profit. This is partly because they know that the market for nuclear missile-generated craters is fickle, so their sales are going to vary dramatically from year to year, include whole decades at a stretch where they may not deliver even a single warhead. It is partly because their other principle cargo, national influence, is very hard to value objectively. Most companies carry this product as "goodwill," and serious accountants completely disregard it in valuations.
The whole business model of nuclear submarines is a sham. A ponzy scheme foisted off on a credulous public awed by technology and investor story time, run by directors spending other people's money, but guaranteed to collect their own luxurious salaries regardless of whether the business ever turns a profit. 50 years without delivering a single megaton warhead...you'd think investors would wake up.
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The melt down button would be 'greyed out' ofc :)
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I like it when people rant half nonsense for pages and finally come to a conclusion and on top of that they make a one sentence claim: that was carefully fed lie after lie about nuclear power, and the BIG lie that solar+wind can do the trick (THEY CAN'T).
Seems you miss Germany, Portugal, Spain and Denmark as some very solar and wind heavy countries. Even France is slowly replacing nuclear plants with wind power (especially in Brittany, well they actually never had nuke there besides a research reactor, but
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Because wind blows just as demand for power is highest. /s
Re:Well, we really should be at that stage by now. (Score:4, Interesting)
If all nuclear vessels were operated to the standards of the US Navy then that'd be one thing, but merchant shipping is lucky to not have a hull covered in rust and bilge pumps running constantly to keep the ship from foundering.
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But even if lost due to non-nuclear reasons, the nuclear inventory will be lost with the rest of the ship and happily lie waiting for the containment to rust away in the salt water.
What makes you think it was environmentalists? (Score:5, Insightful)
Coal and oil lobbies, the folks paid to store nuclear waste instead of processing it into new power. Look at those folks. Follow the money. When anything of importance happens it's always money.
Re:And low-emission transport trucks, too (Score:4, Interesting)
There has been talk about about sail-assisted cargo ships for some time.
http://www.sail-world.com/crui... [sail-world.com]
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We've given up on supersonic passenger flight so electricity may eventually have a chance chasing a fixed target instead of a moving one.
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That is nonsense.
The current ICE are at an 20% efficiency level.
A coal plant at roughly 42% and a two stage gas plant around 60%.
The energy used to fill a battery for an EV is a mix of many sources and certainly CO2 wise more efficient than the 42% of the coal plant above.
The whole track of power transport to the car (over 90% efficient), storage (over 90% efficient) and the raw engine (over 98% efficient) adds up to something like 85% efficiency.
So a EV is nearly twice as efficient than an ICE.
On top of th
Batteries? Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
I know i'm old but there was a time when most buses ran off electricity using an overhead wire for power transfer. What's with wanting to go to battery power for this use. It's not like we could have forgotten this technology and with an update using today's technology we have to be able to make it better. Buses have defined routes so we can't argue that it limits flexibility...buses aren't cars, they don't have to be able to go down every road.
Batteries? Seriously? (Score:2, Interesting)
In San Francisco a good percentage of our bus fleet is electric with overhead wires, so the tech is still there, works great, and is not as expensive and problematic as batteries. Trolley buses, look it up. Only issue is the wires are U G L Y
The newer buses even have enough battery power to go a block or two off the wires on battery power and pass an obstruction, something that would bring the old trolley bus system to a standstill.
Re:Batteries? Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
As one of the ACs mentioned, the wires are 'ugly'. The other problem is that running a wire power network that meets today's safety requirements is expensive, thus only good in areas toeing the line of where subways and such would be logical.
It's also a question of flexibility. Sure, the bus doesn't need to go down every road, but they more or less can, providing flexibility. If it'd cost a few million to install new lines to provide electricity to the buses, they're less likely to change/extend the routes.
With batteries becoming so much better, it's actually a good question as to whether they're cheaper today than the power lines.
Re:Batteries? Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
As one of the ACs mentioned, the wires are 'ugly'.
So don't do wires - just put a high-voltage rail in the ground instead of a wire. Sure, we lose a few people not smart enough to NOT touch the third rail - but that would also serve to eliminate overcrowding on buses as well. Win-win!
Re:Batteries? Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also a question of flexibility. Sure, the bus doesn't need to go down every road, but they more or less can, providing flexibility
A electrically powered bus with overhead wires _and_ a battery could go down every road, more or less. There's still the problem of long haul trips. I'm still a little unclear on why the buses have to have a fixed battery capacity that has to charge in place as opposed to swappable, extendable batteries. Buses travel around on fixed routes with set schedules. Why can't there be multiple batteries for each bus, left charging at swap stations along the route. Make them automated. The driver can drive up, hop out, put a key into the swap station, position some forks onto the battery in the bus, push a button and have the used battery hauled out and a charged one slotted in. The whole thing shouldn't take more than five minutes. For long trips, why can't a bus haul a battery trailer with extra capacity?
Re:Batteries? Seriously? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Batteries? Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
In Japan we have trams with both a pantograph and a battery pack the pack covers areas where they can't put up cables. Buses are doing the same with inductive charging at bus stops.
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They still do in San Francisco.
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Buying a new fleet of more expensive city buses primarily benefits the politicians who get to decide which of their friends will get to sell the city the buses.
Any arguments around the desirability or suitability of the new buses are just a bonus for their election year propaganda aimed at credulous residents.
So don't worry, they'll come back around to trollies, railways, etc... they just need to allow enough time to pass for voters to forget their last expensive "great" idea.
Trolleybus (Score:5, Informative)
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Amazingly it won't stop idiotic local councils from ripping them up, even today. Here's a good example - http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/10202967/Wellingtons-trolley-buses-to-go [stuff.co.nz]
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Which is the majority of bus travel that the referenced article is talking about. While the bus being promoted LOOKS like a grey-hound type replacement that is NOT what they are being put in to service for. They are being directed toward large metropolitan areas over routes that are 'well trafficked'; one example being a 17 mile route in/around LA. There are different solutions for different problems. Even in the smallish city I grew up in a 17 mile route was 'nothing major' to deal with. As another poster
The London Bus is a good place to start (Score:5, Interesting)
We have electric and hybrid buses in London, but using a Flywheel [wikipedia.org] (first developed as a fuel-saving measure for F1 cars) to preserve kinetic energy has made the greatest difference to efficiency for London buses.
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For a diesel bus they make a lot of sense in theory, but machining them is expensive, and to be really efficient they would need to spin really, really fast, with possibly deadly results if it begins to wobble.
You don't machine them. You spin or otherwise assemble them out of some material that will disintegrate inside the casing in the case of failure.
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San Francisco still has a ton of trolley buses. We also have old and new trolley cars on rails.
I much prefer electric trolley buses to diesel and natural gas buses. Trolley buses have insane acceleration, presumably better even than battery-electric buses. Without traffic they can really haul-butt, which admittedly sucks if you suffer from motion sickness (as I do), but at least you can get off sooner.
And, personally, I prefer the wires. They give the bus line a feeling of permanence similar to rails. From
Re:Everything old is new again (Score:4, Informative)
Vancouver, BC has a very extensive trolleybus network, with 265 active trolley busses. The system works quite well, and the busses do have battery backup, so they can go off the wires for short periods of time (to go around road construction, accident, pass a parked bus, etc...). As for the wires being ugly? I dunno, they're just part of the fabric of the city. There are some intersections though with rather impressive spider webs hanging over them. :)
Re:Everything old is new again (Score:5, Interesting)
San Francisco has had a fairly extensive trolleybus network since the 1930s. Although only 15 bus lines are trolleybuses, those are the most crowded bus lines, so a significant fraction of bus traffic there is electrified.
It appears that diesel buses cost $450,000, and battery-electric buses cost $825,000, and trolleybuses cost $1m each. Trolleybuses last at least twice as long as diesel buses. The overhead wires cost $2 million per mile and last almost indefinitely, it appears, because I have never seen maintenance being performed on any of them, in contrast to roads and stoplights which are being repaired constantly, and buses which are being replaced often enough.
San Francisco has 300 trolleybuses for 15 lines, and each line is about 6 miles long. Thus the overhead wires cost $180m, the buses cost $300m, and the electricity costs $48m over 24 years. It appears that equivalent diesel buses would cost $270m and use $330m in fuel over 24 years, servicing the same routes (just using the numbers I read from an article and doing the calculation manually). It would appear that trolleybuses cost ~$528m for those routes and diesel buses would cost ~$600m. However, that's not taking into account financing costs etc, which would probably make the trolleybuses more expensive than diesel ones since the upfront cost is higher. Also, this is for routes in San Francisco which are only 6 miles long; the economics may change for suburban routes.
That said, it doesn't seem like the costs are very different whether we choose trolleybuses, diesel buses, or battery-electric buses. It may be slightly more expensive to go electric, but not much.
Super-capacitors? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Super-capacitors? (Score:4, Informative)
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Lesson: the US government should be doing far more investment in firms like Solyndra, to catch up with the Chinese government.
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Re:Super-capacitors? (Score:4, Interesting)
As an investor in renewables, China is well in the lead of ever other nation.
Either the Pew report or that article is giving you an incomplete picture.
China, despite being a leader in nuclear and renewable power, is also going balls out to build coal-gasification plants.
China will be closing some coal power plants, but only ones nearest to its major cities (and responsible for the atrocious air quality). These will be replaced with 50 coal-to-gas plants in NW China and the synthetic natural gas will be shipped to new power plants in/near the cities. Cleaner air, but more CO2 per unit of power.
As a side note, China is responsible for about half the world's coal consumption, with no declines predicted.
Lacking data (Score:3)
How much total CO2 is generated by buses as compared to cars? Since they didn't put it in the article (and since the article reads like an advertisement for an electric bus company), I'm going to guess it's just an advertisement.
Re:Lacking data (Score:5, Informative)
Answer:
88% of CO2 travel footprint is generated by cars, 1% by buses.
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88% of CO2 travel footprint is generated by cars, 1% by buses.
Great research. You completely destroyed the premise of the summary and article in a single sentence.
Re:Lacking data (Score:5, Informative)
Here's what the US National Academies have to say: "One might think that airplanes, trains, and buses would consume most of the energy used in this sector but, in fact, their percentages are relatively small--about 9% for aircraft and about 3% for trains and buses. Personal vehicles, on the other hand, consume more than 60% of the energy used for transportation." [nas.edu]
Completely eliminating emissions from buses would make only a small difference in the big energy picture.
That said, electric buses might not be such a bad thing. I'm driving an electric car these days and it is awesome (even if it isn't a Tesla).
Replacable batteries? (Score:2)
The battery on the Model S is replaceable by robots, surely you could put a rooftop battery on there, and then just swap them out at large bus stations near neighborhood substations for charging? Who on earth builds an industrial grade public bus without swappable batteries in this day and age?
Propane and natural gas powered buses have had their fuel tanks on the roof for decades now. With hooks and simple optics it wouldn't be hard to lift an old battery pack off and swap it for a fresh one in unde
Electric Trolley (Score:3, Informative)
If you are going to be limited to certain routes, why not electrify the routes and then save the weight of the batteries? Then you won't have to worry about recharge times either so you'll get more daily miles out of each bus too.
You might get the occasional free-rider [thebolditalic.com] but only on april 1st.
Just replace buses with electric vehicles. (Score:3)
Instead of a single bus driving around picking people up and dropping them off, have stands with small electric vehicles for individuals. Instead of waiting for a bus, you go to a stand and check out a vehicle and drive it to where you want. Or it drives itself. With self-driving electric vehicles, you could keep all the stands in supply.
Wireless charging (Score:2)
This has to be one of the best use cases I've seen for wireless charging stations. Put one at every bus stop where it's practical. Just by sitting there, while letting people on and off or just waiting to get back on schedule, the bus can be recharging. Also, buses are long, so the density of power sent through the charging coils doesn't have to be as high as with a car.
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This has to be one of the best use cases I've seen for wireless charging stations. Put one at every bus stop where it's practical. Just by sitting there, while letting people on and off or just waiting to get back on schedule, the bus can be recharging. Also, buses are long, so the density of power sent through the charging coils doesn't have to be as high as with a car.
Related: Longbus is Long [redbubble.net]
what about the batteries (Score:2)
good news, we're never leaving Afghanistan. Enjoy your permanent war on terror for some stupid toxic batteries.
It's not about the batteries (Score:2)
Compromise: (Score:4, Informative)
Humans like cars, not buses.
And if you taxed larger or powerful cars heavily*, people would drive more fuel efficient cars. High gas taxes are doing that in some parts of Europe.
In the USA, at least, cars are a status/phallic symbol and thus are larger and/or more powerful than they need to be in a practical sense. There are times I wanted a more powerful car to compete with other more powerful cars during rush hour. But that's size escalation. If you lower the average then there is less need to compete with beefy cars.
Further, taxing beefy cars would encourage more to take public transportation. I know conservatives will balk, but taxes would help with three problems: traffic, pollution (and GW), and gas dependance. Four actually: gov't revenue to help pay down debt and other uses.
* Exemptions would be made for large families and legitimate business use.
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Americans like cars not buses thanks to decades of marketing getting shoved down their throats. That's led to a chicken/egg situation where it's hard to get around without a car because everyone has them.
WTF? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, I'd prefer driving a Ferrari along a deserted Autobahn at top speed to riding a bus. Stuck in traffic and looking for ages for an ultimately expensive parking spot - that bus is looking good. Trains look even better especially with WiFi.
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but in a bus you can read a book. You better won't when driving a car.
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Further, taxing beefy cars would encourage more to take public transportation.
Study your history. That's how SUVs became popular.
legitimate business use.
Elect me the first Minister of Approved Vehicle Use. I'll only need a staff of a few hundred to do inspection and enforcement in my city. Needless to say, all of my agents will be driving large SUVs.
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In the US we cannot afford to lower taxes on cars. We are already in trouble because of very low gas tax and an increase in fuel efficiency over the past 20 years. In fact we really need to change the
no (Score:2)
To really reduce emissions we need nuclear power. Converting CO2 heavy transport to using electricity generated by CO2 heavy coal wont do any good:
http://www.epa.gov/climatechan... [epa.gov]
Even better, put them on rails and go really fast (Score:2)
Or maybe 1968.
are we sure we have the scale right? (Score:2)
I seem to remember (I used to be involved with the local CIC many years ago) that all public transportation including buses collectively account for percentage of commuters, in the US, down in the single digits. (Less than 10%.) This is from memory, but I think the highest usage of mass transit (which again lumped all forms into one statistic, not just buses) was in Massachusetts, and even there it was in the low tens. (Maybe 12 - 15%.)
Comparing the pollution of individual buses directly to individual ca
Electric Buses? (Score:2)
Done [erha.org]
if you really want to cut emissions (Score:2)
Wrong focus (Score:2)
Far more important are the large number of Commercial vehicles, esp. Semis.
About 3 years, O and the Dems tried to push a tax break that would enable us to move new commercial vehicles off diesel and over the nat gas. Sadly, the neo-cons/tea* fought that because the large oil companies do not want to see the price of oil plummet.
What is really needed is to drop the massive subsidies that we have on oil
To really cut emissions (Score:2)
To really cut emissions we need emissionless power generation. The closest thing we get to that in reasonable power density is nuclear.
Buy a better bus! (Score:5, Informative)
A 30 mile range? What kind junk are the buying?
A BYD electric bus [wikipedia.org] has a nominal range of 155 miles. It sounds much more reasonable to me.
Re:Apples and Oranges (buses are not cars) (Score:5, Insightful)
A bus will only get a few mpg, but carries a lot more people.
Sometimes it does. I see a lot of buses driving around 90+% empty.
Re:Apples and Oranges (buses are not cars) (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apples and Oranges (buses are not cars) (Score:5, Funny)
I see a lot of cars driving around 80% empty. To and from work, I must admit that one of them is mine.
You wastrel... At least my Ferrari is only 50% empty!
Re: (Score:2)
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Houston has no zoning. Virtually no one can walk to work.
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You forget the solution that is always 'sold' to people is that they need to buy something. If we gave a shit about the environment, the big ass ships would be nuclear, and people would instead fix their old cars as making new cars is far more damaging to the environment. But that doesn't sell, and the consumer needs something to buy in.
I'm always amazed how duped the 'smart' and general public is.
But they love buying new things, Bernays was a freaking genius.
Re:Container ships (Score:5, Informative)
The largest container ships have huge particulate emissions, but that's because there's no regulation on particulate emissions according to international law. It would be difficult to change that, because regulating ships requires an international agreement. That said, it should be done.
However, ships already have extremely low CO2 emissions per ton-mile. They are already extremely fuel-efficient. The largest ships have 1/15th the fuel usage and CO2 emissions per ton-mile as a tractor-trailer truck, and massively better than your car. If you drive one mile to the store to buy an article of clothing, you have emitted vastly more CO2 than was emitted by shipping it halfway around the globe by containership.
That will have almost no effect on your CO2 emissions.
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3D-print it at home.
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The largest container ships have huge particulate emissions, but that's because there's no regulation on particulate emissions according to international law.
The lack of regulations is why container ships use Bunker No. 6.
It is one grade above the stuff we use to make asphalt and the dirtiest part of oil that can still be used for fuel.
If allowed to cool to room temperature, it turns into a semi-solid.
Countries have started creating regulations for marine engine particulate emissions near their shores,
but banning bunker fuel would have serious effects on the global shipping industry and product prices.
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They out of sight, out of mind. Further, there's really no one to regulate them. Most ocean going boats are registered in countries with the least stringent of regulations and neither the motivation nor ability to do otherwise.
Frankly, if ever there was a case to be made for nuclear power, it would be these boats.
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Let's get away from the bus paradigm altogether. Use small (self-driving) vehicles to move people, instead of large buses. Small vehicles are more flexible and don't clog up traffic as much. They can be disinfected easily between uses by providing wipes or a spray for each new patron to clean the surfaces with.
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I was wondering about that part.
Is it 30 miles at 30mph with no stops?
Or is it 30 miles of stopping every 200 feet to pick up and drop off passengers?
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Or insist they design a bus with an easily swapped out battery pack. It may way a thousand pounds (453.592kg), but that's what technology is for.
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Many bus routes are short & fixed so you can have install fast chargers at several points along the route. But I do like the idea of battery swapping.
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The range is 30 miles. Periodically, the busses will fully recharge in seven and half minutes.
StarMetro in Tallahassee, which has a fleet of 72 diesel buses, found itself coping with budget problems when the price of diesel spiked in 2007. Fuel is typically the second-highest cost for a transit system, behind labor. StarMetro was Proterra’s third customer, ordering three buses in 2010 and two more in 2011, backed by federal funds. “We put them on our most visible route,” said Ralph Wilder, superintendent of transit maintenance. The buses can easily handle the 18-mile loop, which runs from Tallahassee Community College to the Governor’s Square Mall. On this route, all buses stop for 10 minutes in the middle, to wait for connections, so charging up the electric ones doesn’t add any time to the trips. Recharging takes about 7.5 minutes.
So, $825,000 for the electric bus, but only $80,000 in fuel costs over 12 years, vs $447,000 for a diesel bus with $500,000 in fuel costs. In theory, economical, but there are also air quality improvements-- depending on how the electricity is sourced.
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Right, because if you aren't talking about global warming, you won't breathe either!