Ideally, rezoning and infrastructure changes would reduce the need for school buses. We don’t have the time though, so this is a win. Hopefully production can ramp up and governments can create incentives for schools to buy these instead of dead dino powered buses.
School busses are one of the perfect fits for electric engines:
Set schedule with down time to charge Specific route with known distances. Heavy and must drive up hills: which benefit from amazing torque generated by Electric engines. Large internal space for battery storage
Just pray Muskrat doesn’t somehow win the bid. We’ll never see them
Elon would do something ridiculous like buy Lyft for 10 billion too much and require drivers to use Teslas. He would then get a cost+percentage transportation contract. He then gold plates the interior components after a few years so the cost is higher, therefore the percentage is bigger.
A tesla roadtrain has got to be one of the last things I’d ever want to see as mass transportation lol
And as long as it can cover the longest route on one charge it wouldn’t need to cover that same distance every trip. You could pick the buses route based on battery % and have them alternate.
You’re forgetting the most important feature, usb charging ports for every seat
I can already imagine someone shoving gum into them :(
Subscription based of course.
Meh, outlets are superior than USB ports. USB wears out too quickly with rough use and, with USB-A, the charging cannot exceed 15W.
I saw a video of the latest Tesla model 3 2024 and it has one USB charging port inside the center console lol.
There are also 2 in the back, below the screen/hvac, and there is a dual wireless charger up front, so that’s probably enough isn’t it?
Wireless charging isn’t the same.
“We found that in ideal conditions, so not a real cold morning or anything like that, but the bus was getting between 1.4 and 1.5 [miles] to 1 percent state of charge. So that means that your range on 100 percent state of charge is in that 140 to 150 mile range,” explained Mark Nestle, vice president of business development and strategy at GreenPower.
“On the other side of the spectrum, we saw that in a January, February timeframe with really cold mornings where the weather was causing you to have the heaters going hard in the morning, that range would drop down to a 0.7 to 0.8 to 1; we did go as low as a 0.69. So that’s 70 to 80 miles on 100 percent charge and that is because heat takes more energy than air conditioning,” Nestlen said.
“I think what that pilot then tells us is it’s not so much that that’s a negative, it’s just simply you have to calculate that into your decisions on how you set up your charging infrastructure. If I’m going to have mornings where I’ve got that machine being used and it’s going to impact my range, I need to make sure that I have the correct DC fast charging infrastructure set up so that I have the time to opportunity-charge that bus between the morning and afternoon so that it’s back to its 100 percent when it goes out for the afternoon runs,” Nestlen explained.
I am optimistic about this, though not as optimistic as the guy they interviewed.
Starting in a warm building can really help - the cabin is warm and the battery is warm when setting off, without using any of the battery.
To expand on that, couldn’t you also have a separate power source to warm up the bus before it was taken out on a cold morning? Something like an engine block heater for an ICE vehicle.
Not even a separate power source - most EVs can pre-heat (including battery heater) using the charge lead that is already connected.
Sure.
I just thought his characterization of the reduction of range was a bit comical.
7% at the end of a ~300mi roundtrip rural run is really cutting it close 😳 although if the journey is mostly flat I think it’s OK, as long as there’s enough range to go via any diversion if the road is blocked.
They could definitely get a bigger battery onto that roof, the main expense there probably would be customising the aircon to fit around a roof battery pack instead of buying one off the shelf
The electric buses here all have roof mounted batteries and they last pretty long - the chinese Yutongs are out all day with the heating on, but our domestic built ones seem to last only 3/4 of the day, and after that they vanish with the old diesel ones appearing on routes until the night
Keep long routes diesel or gas for now and wait for battery tech to improve. Even if 70% of buses are moved to electric, it is still a big chunk of emissions that are cut.
Or maybe just put a charging point in at thge driver’s lunchtime rest stop
Lunchtime rest stop?
Where I’m from bus drivers drive from 7am - 9am and then go home and come back for 3:30pm - 5:30pm.
They essentially get the entire work day off. Not just lunch.
You can offset some loss by putting solar panels on the roof. However you have to balance it properly because people forget that these things weigh 45lbs each and you need to factor the additional weight into equation.
Solar would barely make a dent with the power consumption of a bus
It would. Not if you use the full 300 mile range twice a day, but many school buses are used for two 25 mile trips per weekday and parked in the sun the rest of the day plus weekends. Cover the roof in high efficiency panels and you can get significant range.
I wouldn’t say barely. It depends on the rating of the panels and the amount of weight they have. Also if we are just using them to offset energy I don’t see why it would be an issue if you’re accounting for the additional weight and resources used by adding them to this electrical system. If you could offset the loss of operating something small on the vehicle with that small amount of production it would seem worth it as long as it doesn’t increase costs or otherwise put strain on the vehicle’s travel range.
Great, but I can guarantee most school boards can’t afford it
how many school routes are 480km?
Most districts set it up to have a few buses do all the HS students, then the MS/Elementary students then kill a bit of time and repeat. Without much time to charge 4 routes on one bus might be close.
“Rezoning.” Have you seen local school boards?
Not sure about cooling, but there are a number of heating options that exist. We’re basically looking at an RV, perhaps they could have some kind of diesel heater as a stop gap. I would think that could easily be retrofitted with something electric or ??? down the road. Mini wood stove haha. Maybe not kid friendly.
