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Think it was impressive when a Tesla club drove a Model S nearly 670 miles? It has nothing on what Proterra just managed. The startup just drove a Catalyst E2 Max electric bus a whopping 1,101.2 miles on a single charge. That's the furthest any EV has managed before recharging, and well past the 1,013.8 miles driven by the previous record-holder, a one-seat experimental car nicknamed "Boozer." It's not hard to see how Proterra managed the feat when you know about the technology, but this still bodes well for eco-friendly public transportation.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/19/electric-bus-travels-record-1101-miles-on-one-charge/
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Electric Bus Sets Record With 1,101-Mile Trip on a Single Charge
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Everyone hates me because I'm paranoid.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @08:50PM (6 children)
The first bus I found does just over 39 liters per 100 km (almost exactly 6 mpg) and has a 220 liter (58.12 gallon) gas tank. This means it gets just over 563 kilometers (350 miles) per tank. At a constant speed of 35 MPH, that is 10 hours of nonstop driving. So, even if the bus gets half that range, it is well within the neighborhood of other buses. Finally, it is worth noting that filling a 220 liter tank at current prices is $148, while charging a 660kWh battery (for about 3 times the range) at the average all-in residential rate of 13.22 cents per kWh is $87.25, and $47.65 at the average industrial rate (7.22 cents) plus they may even get a break at that for off-peak charging.
Multiply that savings per day by the number of days in its expected life and you could easily save hundreds of thousands of dollars, especially because you replace your oldest, and therefore least efficient, vehicles first. And, that savings doesn't even factor in the reduced maintenance, as you mentioned.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday September 21 2017, @09:22PM (5 children)
Reduced maintenance is probably not as much as you suspect.
Industrial class diesel engines require very little maintenance. Maybe an oil change, but maybe not as frequent as you suspect.
The buses still need wheel and brake maintenance. Although now the brakes are way more complex with regeneration requirements.
The street still beats the hell out of the suspension, tires, wheels, steering, and cars still smack into them almost daily.
The air conditioner has to work, the heating in the winter is no longer free of charge, and somebody still has to clean
up the barf, piss, and detritus of the ridership.
A heavier bus beats the hell out of the streets, a wheel with a built in electric motor (should they go that way) not only beats the pot holes but also beats the motors.
Tesla is changing out motors [greencarreports.com] way more often than they ever expected to do. Its a fairly big deal [teslarati.com].
In short, maintenance may be a wash in the long haul.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @12:04AM
Regeneration happens through the motor, so it doesn't change the brakes themselves (i.e. the things at the wheels) at all. Now if you meant the whole braking system, it could be anywhere from a little more complex (just add a brake pedal position sensor, and fade regeneration in from 0-100% over the first 25% or so of pedal travel), to a lot more complex (provisions to increase/decrease mechanical braking force depending on whether the battery is already full and nowhere to dump regenerated power), but that's all parts of the braking system that don't need regular maintenance, not the actual brakes that need serviced all the time, and will be about the same as normal. (Maybe a little less frequently, because all the work done by regenerative braking is work the brake pads don't have to do.)
As for the extra weight beating up the roads, absolutely! But that's a different department, and don't you know externalizing your costs is how to get ahead in both business and government?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RedBear on Friday September 22 2017, @03:13AM
What a peculiar thing to say. Regenerative braking is performed by turning the traction motor into a generator. The same powerful electric motor that turns the axle to move the vehicle resists the forward movement while generating electricity. If the motor is powerful enough and regen is used correctly it drastically reduces the use of the regular brakes, which are no different from the brakes on any other vehicle. The brake pads on a lot of newer EVs with strong regen braking will likely outlast the overall vehicle. There is nothing "complex" about either the physical brakes or the regen braking system on an EV.
But you're right about a lot of the maintenance being the same between ICVs and EVs. It's only the drivetrain that is simpler. All other moving parts will still break down over time.
On the other hand, it's a myth that EVs are immensely heavier than ICVs. Slightly heavier, usually, but not drastically heavier. Don't underestimate the weight of a regular drivetrain, engine and fuel tanks. And so far nobody seems to think in-wheel motors are a good idea, even on small vehicles. I've seen exactly one prototype EV with in-wheel motors in the several years I've been reading about EVs. That's not something to worry about. A properly sized electric motor can easily last far longer than the vehicle's useful lifetime.
The primary benefits of EV buses are reducing noise, toxic diesel fumes and particulate pollution in cities, and reducing fuel costs. Many municipalities are already investing in EV buses because the ROI over the lifetime of the vehicle is already calculated to work out quite well, even if the EV bus is initially much more expensive. As batteries continue to improve in energy density and come down in cost that will only be more true in the future. Things are advancing so quickly in this area that I expect the diesel bus makers to be out of business in less than a decade.
Those projections about Tesla's motors failing in large numbers were based on some very poor assumptions. They had some issues on early production models with some shims that were slightly too thin or something like that. Before they figured out exactly what the problem was and fixed it in the production line, they engaged in a policy of simply replacing problematic drive units at the first sign of trouble. After they examined the faulty drive units and figured out the cause, they fixed it and since then they don't produce vehicles with that problem and will just replace the shim on the early vehicles that do have the problem. All evidence that I've seen seems to point to no future wave of catastrophic motor or gear failure in any Tesla that wasn't a very early production model with that very specific problem. I haven't even heard anything related to that issue in nearly two years (since those articles came out in late 2015), even though Tesla still continue to crank out thousands of vehicles every month, and the early vehicles are all way past 60,000 miles. If it was going to be a huge issue we should have heard about it by now.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday September 22 2017, @09:14AM (2 children)
I'm not sure how just moving the motor to the wheel helps beat potholes: wouldn't it increase the unsprung mass [wikipedia.org] and make things worse?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday September 22 2017, @03:05PM (1 child)
It doesn't help beat potholes, it makes it far worse for exactly the reason you state. In-wheel motors are a terrible idea mostly because of unsprung mass; that's why no one uses them. frojack bringing them up is just a red herring; it's like complaining about how bad Linux is because you don't like twm [wikipedia.org].
In-wheel motors might make sense in the future if they ever figure out how to make motors out of some kind of ultra-lightweight material, rather than iron and tons of copper. For now, they're just dumb, though I guess they might make sense on a vehicle that has no suspension at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23 2017, @12:57AM
This part of the whole discussion seems a little pointless, however. These buses don't have in-wheel motors, it has a 2-speed AWD drivetrain.