“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.