"and the buses can recharge at off-peak demand hours"
No they can't. Someone really failed here. The bus needs to charge overnight for the morning run, then charge again for the afternoon run.
Then somehow they plan to discharge it during peak 5-10 hours. Except at 5PM the bus battery is basically empty, since it just finished the afternoon run.
It's almost like they expect the bus battery to be twice as large as it needs to be so it can charge overnight and have extra. But that's obviously quite a stupid thing to do.
They did mention using them during the summer, and that might work.
Did we read the same article? I don’t see vehicle range mentioned. I expect less than 50% of the battery to be used for standard duty cycles. Anecdotally, people in my life who drive EVs charge them weekly or every few days.
Better start with trucks or something to normalize it first. One battery catching on fire in an EV schoolbus would set back the entire initiative decades due to public image
There are already 8,820 electric school busses in service [1], and they would be plugged in when used for grid support. If they burn from this use case, it's going to be off hours without kids on them. Currently, about one combustion school bus fire occurs every day in the US [2] [3], so school bus fires are hardly unusual and one might expect electric propulsion versions to combust less often.
There is a $5B EPA fund to electrify school busses [4], so whether this works or not is not material for the primary use case. Doesn't hurt to try, collect data, and decision to continue at a later point.
No I don't mean from this use case, I mean during operation in a bus full of kids.
> about one combustion school bus fire occurs every day in the US [2] [3], so school bus fires are hardly unusual and one might expect electric propulsion versions to combust less often
EV is obviously safer but one fire in a bus full of kids and right wing will block it for years to come. Go explain them how EVs actually combust less :)
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[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 30.6 ms ] threadNo they can't. Someone really failed here. The bus needs to charge overnight for the morning run, then charge again for the afternoon run.
Then somehow they plan to discharge it during peak 5-10 hours. Except at 5PM the bus battery is basically empty, since it just finished the afternoon run.
It's almost like they expect the bus battery to be twice as large as it needs to be so it can charge overnight and have extra. But that's obviously quite a stupid thing to do.
They did mention using them during the summer, and that might work.
There is a $5B EPA fund to electrify school busses [4], so whether this works or not is not material for the primary use case. Doesn't hurt to try, collect data, and decision to continue at a later point.
[1] https://electricschoolbusinitiative.org/electric-school-bus-...
[2] https://www.firetrace.com/fire-protection-blog/ntbs-safety-r...
[3] https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/12392
[4] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/05/epa-opens-applications-...
No I don't mean from this use case, I mean during operation in a bus full of kids.
> about one combustion school bus fire occurs every day in the US [2] [3], so school bus fires are hardly unusual and one might expect electric propulsion versions to combust less often
EV is obviously safer but one fire in a bus full of kids and right wing will block it for years to come. Go explain them how EVs actually combust less :)