EEVblog 1441 - Electric Buses are NOT a SCAM (Adam Something)

[EEVblog]

Repsonding to Adam Something's video claiming that electric buses are a scam. Lets analyse his claims and look at what's really happening with the cost benefit anlysis of electric buses vs diesel and electric trolley buses.



00:00 - Electric buses are a scam
01:20 - The claims
01:50 - Growth of electric buses in China
02:40 - Why not just put up wires in cities?
03:45 - Visual polution
05:50 - But they catch on FIRE!
06:38 - Batteries use slave labour!
07:20 - Cost of Electric buses vs Diesel
14:00 - Autonymous trolly buses
18:28 - Everything BUT fully electric buses are viable! Anlysis of trolley buses.
21:29 - Dave's practical table of Pros and Cons comparing the 4 options
27:28 - Electric buses are DUMB! Yeah, nah.



Adam's video:

[SeanB]

Couple of things about having overhead rails. Hard to install, as you typically either have to use eminent domain to attach to buildings, or put up reinforced light poles, which each need to survive a truck impact, and cannot thus be break away, so lethal in any accident. Poles also need a massive foundation, the ones here that were retrofitted, using the original trolleybus poles from around 1890, went back in using a 10 cubic metre reinforced steel foundation, to handle the load of the caternary cables used to put lights in the middle of the road. Light cables, not 3 tons of cable per span.

Then the street side, you need to have a dedicated bus lane, hard to fit in most cities now, and also make passing sections with multiple overhead rails, as yon run both all stops and express buses in most cities. Also needs to have wires run to all the depots, and thus you are limited in where you put a large depot, in expensive real estate in the city. Safety is also worse, you just need one clueless van with a high ladder, and you have a system down for hours to repair, or one idiot truckie with an oversize load ripping the wires out, and no transport for weeks to repair.

Electric buses have an advantage, can go off route for diversions, can go longer distances without needing the infrastructure, can use the existing roads, and do not need a dedicated lane set. Yes you need to charge, but you will find most bus routes run only 2 peaks a day, morning and afternoon peak commuter time, and the rest of the time they run near empty.  Electric you can easily have the buses park at a charger after peak, and charge, with a subset running the day low level travelers, and then have them all available at peak again.  Here you will see every day 4 buses running in a line, during the day, sharing the one passenger between them, but morning and evening they are more or less full, even with the junky service offered.


Yes, like has a counter, dislike has none............

[Chupacabras]

Those maintenance costs for trolley lines are calculated per 1 trolley bus? Or per how many trolleybuses? Is it for like 100 trolleybuses? I doubt it is 326k per trolley bus. And maintenance for electric bus is lower than for trolley bus? Hard to believe. Trolleybus is basically electric bus without battery. So maintenance costs for electric bus must be higher (just because changing battery is very expensive). Did you verify those data?

Maintenance for electric bus 3700euro/year, maintenance for trolleybus 9275eur/year, looks like BS to me.

[wraper]

Those maintenance costs for trolley lines are calculated per 1 trolley bus? Or per how many trolleybuses? Is it for like 100 trolleybuses? I doubt it is 326k per trolley bus. And maintenance for electric bus is lower than for trolley bus? Hard to believe. Trolleybus is basically electric bus without battery. So maintenance costs for electric bus must be higher (just because changing battery is very expensive). Did you verify those data?

Maintenance for electric bus 3700euro/year, maintenance for trolleybus 9275eur/year, looks like BS to me.

How about current collector wear?

[Chupacabras]

Those maintenance costs for trolley lines are calculated per 1 trolley bus? Or per how many trolleybuses? Is it for like 100 trolleybuses? I doubt it is 326k per trolley bus. And maintenance for electric bus is lower than for trolley bus? Hard to believe. Trolleybus is basically electric bus without battery. So maintenance costs for electric bus must be higher (just because changing battery is very expensive). Did you verify those data?

Maintenance for electric bus 3700euro/year, maintenance for trolleybus 9275eur/year, looks like BS to me.

How about current collector wear?

Do you expect it to be any close to price of a new battery for electric bus? I highly doubt.

[Chupacabras]

I recon it should be 37000 euro/year for annual maintenance costs for electric buses, not 3700 euro/year.
New battery costs 370k (according to video). When battery lasts 10 years (this is very optimistic), then it should be 37k/year just because of battery changing.

[wraper]

Those maintenance costs for trolley lines are calculated per 1 trolley bus? Or per how many trolleybuses? Is it for like 100 trolleybuses? I doubt it is 326k per trolley bus. And maintenance for electric bus is lower than for trolley bus? Hard to believe. Trolleybus is basically electric bus without battery. So maintenance costs for electric bus must be higher (just because changing battery is very expensive). Did you verify those data?

Maintenance for electric bus 3700euro/year, maintenance for trolleybus 9275eur/year, looks like BS to me.

How about current collector wear?

Do you expect it to be any close to price of a new battery for electric bus? I highly doubt.

As I understand that maintenance cost does not include battery. All of the infrastructure needed for trolleybus operation and it's maintenance is not free either.

[Chupacabras]

As I understand that maintenance cost does not include battery. All of the infrastructure needed for trolleybus operation and it's maintenance is not free either.

That's why it is separated into two values (in the video). Maintenance costs for the grid, and maintenance costs for bus/trolleybus.
Both values (when comparing electric bus and trolley bus) look like BS.

Annual maintenance costs SHOULD contain battery changing, so it will be more then 37k/year if we want to compare it to trolleybus.
Annual maintenance costs for the grid should be calculated per/trolleybus if you want to compare economics of those two options.

[Kleinstein]

The trolley busses may still need some battery to reduce the peak power requirements. So the no battery version may not be really viable. With the usually relatively low voltage in the overhead lines the power is limited. The trolly busses also have some tricky points a crossings. So it may be OK with a few main line, but it gets more tricky with a dense grid. Similar at the opposite end with less frequent used lines the investment costs for the wires just get too high for only a few uses per day.

An tricky part with the overhead lines is that the fire department has no longer easy access with a ladder. The wires everywhere also pose some hazzard, both fire and electric shock. Trees on the road side and the lines also are a bit tricky.

Battery electric busses make more sense than an electric car: they often run in start / stop city trafic and they usually run quite a few kilometer a week compared to a car. So the relatively high investment for the battery and limited lifetime from aging for the battery are less of a problem. The problem with cars is that they usually run a low milage so the battery may die from age, not charge cycles. To get the full number of cycles from modern cells it is more like 1-3 cycles per day and not 1-2 per week.

Given an increased number of electric busses the cost should go down, at least in the long run. Even 10 x the cost of a cars battery is not that expensive. Without the battery an electric bus may get even cheaper than the diesel version. For frequent use the battery costs should be well set off by lower fuel costs.

[Chupacabras]

The trolley busses may still need some battery to reduce the peak power requirements. So the no battery version may not be really viable. With the usually relatively low voltage in the overhead lines the power is limited.

Every vehicle has some battery. But it is just for electronics (like lights, displays, ability to open the doors, etc.), not for powering the motors. When the lines are off, trolleybus stops.
So it is not fair to say that even trolleybus has a battery like electric bus.

Without the battery an electric bus may get even cheaper than the diesel version.

Electric bus without a battery is not an electric bus...

[tszaboo]

Few things I should put right. I am with you, electrification makes sense, but I would like to give some perspective.
Budapest installed the first trolley line in 1933, and the current infrastructure was started in 1949. So the lines are there for 70 years, there was plenty of time to install everything. Getting approvals is not really an issue, as it is an everyday sight. While Sydney might have underground wires, lot of European cities, everything from phone lines, to power us above ground, so it makes little difference if you see 30 cables on the street, or 32.

Trolley busses without batteries have some autonomy, it is usually a few hundred meters, works with flywheels.
The usable lifetime of a trolley is very long, there are 31 in operation since 1987 according to Wikipedia.
Some of these lines are very-very busy, and have 300 busses a day. So when you are talking about stopping for 20 minutes to charge up: For some infrastructures, that's not going to cut it. Just to put it in contrast, Budapest has 2M inhabitants, Sydney has 5.5M. While Budapest has 1.3B passengers per year, compared to 300M in Sydney. Calling it busy is an understatement, imagine 10x the usage of the network.
Your infrastructure costs TBH doesn't make sense for me. Citys build tram lines, subways. The infrastructure cost will be much higher for both of those, yet they still do it, there must be a reason for it, right?
Dave, I totally get where you are coming from, and to your particular City, probably electric busses make more sense. While Adam something is also right, in some of his arguments.

[james_s]

We have had a fleet of electric trolly buses in Seattle for decades and there are overhead wires along the main routes. They also have hybrid diesel-electric buses that run on the wires where available and then they fire up the conventional diesel engine when they need to go somewhere without wires. I think the only battery on board those is the standard one for engine starting and to run lights and stuff.

[ve7xen]

Vancouver (Translink) operates a large trolley bus network across the city, and has done for > 50 years. These buses are due for replacement ~2027-2028, and when recently analyzing their potential replacement with battery buses as part of Translink's Low Carbon Fleet Transition plan (2020), they determined that:

The life-cycle cost analysis indicated that replacement of existing trolleys with battery buses may result in life-cycle savings. However, there are significant uncertainties related to future trolley bus costs. In addition, replacement of trolleys with battery buses would require either significant modifications and likely expansion of the Vancouver Transit Center, or the development of in-route chargers in downtown Vancouver – neither or which could easily be accomplished before the current trolleys must be retired.

Which implies that the life cycle costs are likely slightly higher than diesel/hybrid buses, even with a longstanding and large network of catenary wires and rectifier stations. However, this was largely due to the high purchase cost of this type of bus, which seems likely to be an artifact of their unpopularity in North America rather than the technology itself, to me. They also found that the life cycle costs of two types of battery buses (smaller batteries using in-route charging, and larger batteries with overnight depot charging) were currently both slightly higher (5-10%)than diesel buses, though they project the costs to fall in the next 10 years. According to their projections, maintenance costs were expected to be about the same for all bus types, though unfortunately they didn't provide such a breakdown for the trolley buses.

The most significant reason why electric buses are projected to be more expensive to operate than diesel buses are the high cost of bus purchase and, for depot charging, the required increase in fleet size due to limits on battery size and resulting range limitations. Battery buses are more expensive to purchase than diesel buses due to high costs for both batteries and electric drive trains.

...

Life-cycle costs of depot-charged electric buses are projected to fall below the cost of hybrid buses after model year 2035 but are still projected to be slightly higher than diesel bus costs through model year 2050.

I'm pretty surprised that the trolley buses are so expensive to purchase. I would have thought they'd be the simplest electric option, but I suppose it is an economy of scale. If the catenary infrastructure is already in place, even if they are slightly more expensive, perhaps the lower embodied energy and presumably better efficiency tips the scales.

[Lord of nothing]

Here in my City (Vienna) we have Lines where a Contractor operate Bus Lines in behave of the Public Transport Company. So it would mean the have to buy there own Infrastructure who I could not believe that will happen.
I cant believe that long size Bus could be replaced now:

We have here 2 City with a Trolley "O-Bus" System and one of them have also a short Tram System.
What I remember the Price for each Bus is more than for a normal Diesel Bus. In the Past in my City had Natural Gas Bus but the replaced by Diesel for no reason.

[BezITAD]

Growth of electric buses in China:
In China, the buses generally weigh less, cost less, and they have access to all the materials to make an electric bus locally and for cheap prices. On top of that there is always upwards pressure on fuel and gas in China, meaning electric is the better alternative. This argument means little. They also have a bus guideway which runs on dedicated above ground track. They have monorails and stuff. China is the land of throwing anything and the kitchen sink at any problem. Surely we aren't going to follow China in adopting their building practices.

Why not just put up wires in cities?
In modern developed countries, such a concept is do damn difficult, we've lost the ability to do such a thing. It's crazy how there was a day and age where the trolley or tram was seen as a solution to move poor people in and out of the city. I mean, what happened? By this argument, nobody would put solar panels on their roof either. Think about the installation cost of this, for just one roof. I mean, a tram line carries F tonnes of passengers, whilst your solar panels just allow you to run your dryer during the day.

I mean, society has crumbled to dust the moment we can't hang a bunch of cables through the street. I mean, we're digging tunnels for billions of dollars, and your saying hanging cables is out of question? The grid is already there man, it's not like you need to run new transmission lines all the way into the city for it. In Vietnam they have so many cables running around the city it's not funny. They have no problem, I just think that as a society we are like Rome, we've become obese on the luxuries of life and our republic is failing because we simply can't use any vision. Batteries are never going to solve any of this planets problems, but running cables down every street which could have renewable energy in them could be the best option.

I mean, tell me, which to you is a better vision, every person on the face of the planet owning a $20k battery that lasts 10 years before having to dispose of it, or every street having cabling. The true vision would be every driver driving a dodgem car down the street and overhead cables above every lane, and at an intersection the entire roof is like those dodgems. I mean, how cheap are dodgem cars to operate?

Batteries use slave labour!
Mate, I think the real issue here is there isn't a viable option for disposal of batteries. You imagine the size of the plants making these batteries, and in China, they are literally only able to recycle maybe 16%. And they dispose of them dangerously, they just let the gases escape into the air. I mean, if China can't recycle this shit, nobody can. All of these batteries are tomorrows generations problem. And I'm going to tell you, as someone who has been exposed to lithium badly, it's a really shitty industry to work in, I wouldn't wish this type of future for any of my children. Batteries are a problem, they are stockpiling them somewhere next to the solar panels and inverters from previous moronic generations of idiots who bought into the green wave.

You have a dream of a brighter future, but it's full of idealism like carbon neutral. The worst of humanity is on display with these batteries. You know how many times a single lithium battery ends up burning down a recycling facility? We are 20 years behind fixing our past mistakes, which include solar, wind farms, batteries and we'll never fix the planet from all of that Teflon crap we are still pumping out into water systems all around the world. There's no where on earth where you can find a single living organism that doesn't have Teflon byproducts.

[nctnico]

IMHO from the pollution aspect alone electric busses beat diesel busses hands down.

[thm_w]

Which implies that the life cycle costs are likely slightly higher than diesel/hybrid buses, even with a longstanding and large network of catenary wires and rectifier stations. However, this was largely due to the high purchase cost of this type of bus, which seems likely to be an artifact of their unpopularity in North America rather than the technology itself, to me. They also found that the life cycle costs of two types of battery buses (smaller batteries using in-route charging, and larger batteries with overnight depot charging) were currently both slightly higher (5-10%)than diesel buses, though they project the costs to fall in the next 10 years. According to their projections, maintenance costs were expected to be about the same for all bus types, though unfortunately they didn't provide such a breakdown for the trolley buses.

Not sure where you/they got the maintenance info, but they've only been running electric on #100 route for ~1 year so I doubt they have much useful data as of yet.

the battery-electric buses cost, on average, $1 million to $1.1 million, while diesel buses are $500,000 to $600,000. Petrunic said based on the information that is available, the electric buses pay for themselves within four or five years.
Each bus will remove about 100 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and save $40,000 in fuel costs per year compared to a diesel bus.
Although there is no hard data on how electric bus maintenance costs compare to those of diesel buses, Petrunic said it is expected they will be simpler and cheaper to maintain.

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/translinks-battery-electric-buses-hit-the-road-in-metro-vancouver

I'm pretty surprised that the trolley buses are so expensive to purchase. I would have thought they'd be the simplest electric option, but I suppose it is an economy of scale. If the catenary infrastructure is already in place, even if they are slightly more expensive, perhaps the lower embodied energy and presumably better efficiency tips the scales.

http://www.kevinsbusrail.com/translink/d40lf/tlink_e40lfpics.html ~1mil each trolley in 2003.
Its essentially already an electric bus, with just a smaller battery, so the cost is not much less. Plus the articulating units are 60ft, which is 20ft longer than the electric bus.
As you say the design is unique, not many other customers to sell to.

[ve7xen]

Not sure where you/they got the maintenance info, but they've only been running electric on #100 route for ~1 year so I doubt they have much useful data as of yet.

My comment is entirely based on the PDF I linked, it was the most authoritative document I could find speaking about this. They don't go into detail on maintenance costs other than to say that other than overhaul, "only 25 – 40 percent of current maintenance activities will change" and to mention some of the other costs/changes associated with BEBs. But as in most life cycle analysis for this kind of purpose, the assumptions are mostly quite conservative, so they may have just pulled 'equivalent' out of their ass as a starting point.

Petrunic said it is expected they will be simpler and cheaper to maintain.

I'd expect that to be the case too, but it doesn't seem to be the assumption Translink is basing their fleet planning on.

Its essentially already an electric bus, with just a smaller battery, so the cost is not much less. Plus the articulating units are 60ft, which is 20ft longer than the electric bus.
As you say the design is unique, not many other customers to sell to.

The same document talks at fair length about battery costs and how it is a major cost driver for BEBs, and makes a point of differentiating between the lower capacity in-route charging buses and the $150k more expensive larger capacity ones. They are claiming $945k purchase price for a short range 40' BEB, and I would have expected the cost of a trolley bus to be somewhat lower than that with its negligible battery storage (between a diesel and battery bus), though it is apparently considerably more, as they are clear that the expected lower lifecycle cost (on the existing trolley routes) of a BEB is primarily due to high purchase price of the trolley bus. They'll be purchasing 60ft articulated battery buses eventually, once they start deploying them to higher capacity routes.

It definitely all tracks to me that trolleys aren't a good option for a new build. I'm just kind of surprised that the battery buses win the economics game even with the trolley infrastructure in place. Economy of scale is a crazy thing.

[james_s]

My comment is entirely based on the PDF I linked, it was the most authoritative document I could find speaking about this. They don't go into detail on maintenance costs other than to say that other than overhaul, "only 25 – 40 percent of current maintenance activities will change" and to mention some of the other costs/changes associated with BEBs. But as in most life cycle analysis for this kind of purpose, the assumptions are mostly quite conservative, so they may have just pulled 'equivalent' out of their ass as a starting point.

That sounds pretty reasonable to me. Maintenance of the engine in a diesel bus is only a portion of the regular maintenance needed. Things like suspension, bushings, brakes, door mechanisms, HVAC and other bits will be broadly the same as a conventional bus. Then there is exterior cleaning and repair of damage from minor collisions, interior cleaning, repair of seat damage and general wear & tear, all of that will be the same as any bus.

[Alti]

I was really surprised to hear about astronomical maintenance costs of trolleybus overhead wiring, catenary support and the accompanying infrastructure, per unit, per year. Somehow my perception of this factor was incomplete, I really thought these elements come for "almost free"    I thought that once the catenary system is integrated with the city infrastructure, there are close to zero additional costs of maintaining it.

Interesting publication UITP "How to Build and Operate an Efficient Trolleybus System" pdf

[quarros]

Why am I not surprised that Budapest is the place for this example. 
Sure in Budapest the lines, the infrastructure, are already built for a long long time.

Also it irks me a bit why the (grid) energy losses are not counted separately from the maintenance costs.

Scratch that. The losses would also be there if a charging system is built out for most long stop bus stations.

[Lord of nothing]

 

from the pollution aspect alone electric busses beat diesel busses

sure and the Power come from where? In Germany the shut down there Nuclear Power Plant and use there Coal... 
Our City have currently an E-Bus who get recharched at the final Station in the City Center:

That small one is only for the inner City Center who there is quite no passengers.
For other Routes the would need an Bus every 1-2 Minutes. 

[wraper]

My comment is entirely based on the PDF I linked, it was the most authoritative document I could find speaking about this. They don't go into detail on maintenance costs other than to say that other than overhaul, "only 25 – 40 percent of current maintenance activities will change" and to mention some of the other costs/changes associated with BEBs. But as in most life cycle analysis for this kind of purpose, the assumptions are mostly quite conservative, so they may have just pulled 'equivalent' out of their ass as a starting point.

That sounds pretty reasonable to me. Maintenance of the engine in a diesel bus is only a portion of the regular maintenance needed. Things like suspension, bushings, brakes, door mechanisms, HVAC and other bits will be broadly the same as a conventional bus. Then there is exterior cleaning and repair of damage from minor collisions, interior cleaning, repair of seat damage and general wear & tear, all of that will be the same as any bus.

Not breaks though, electric vehicles use them only when a very rapid breaking is needed, otherwise breaking happens by electric motor.

My comment is entirely based on the PDF I linked, it was the most authoritative document I could find speaking about this. They don't go into detail on maintenance costs other than to say that other than overhaul, "only 25 – 40 percent of current maintenance activities will change" and to mention some of the other costs/changes associated with BEBs. But as in most life cycle analysis for this kind of purpose, the assumptions are mostly quite conservative, so they may have just pulled 'equivalent' out of their ass as a starting point.

That sounds pretty reasonable to me. Maintenance of the engine in a diesel bus is only a portion of the regular maintenance needed. Things like suspension, bushings, brakes, door mechanisms, HVAC and other bits will be broadly the same as a conventional bus. Then there is exterior cleaning and repair of damage from minor collisions, interior cleaning, repair of seat damage and general wear & tear, all of that will be the same as any bus.

Not brakes though, electric vehicles use them only when a very rapid breaking is needed, otherwise braking happens by electric motor.
HVAC won't be the same too as it's implementation is vastly different.

[james_s]

Not brakes though, electric vehicles use them only when a very rapid breaking is needed, otherwise braking happens by electric motor.
HVAC won't be the same too as it's implementation is vastly different.

The brakes still need maintenance whether used heavily or not, both hydraulic and air brake systems need regular maintenance and inspections. The HVAC won't be the same but it will need the same sort of maintenance, cabin air filter, blower motor, refrigerant hoses, it may be lower maintenance than the engine driven compressor in a diesel bus but it will still need maintenance.

[thm_w]

34k vs 18k per year, 2x the maintenance cost for diesel: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/10/3977/pdf
89 euro per day vs 33 euro per day, this is the one from daves video, but no idea where those numbers came from: https://www.maintenanceforum.net/cp2018/papers/S_Misanovic-mf18.pdf
"Maintenance costs for the electric buses was $0.55 per mile compared with $1.53 for the diesel fleet.": https://www.publicpower.org/periodical/article/electric-buses-mass-transit-seen-cost-effective (maybe deceptively low as the buses are newer?)
9,420 euro vs 5,350 euro: https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/304720

One from Brunei that shows maintenance cost being about the same: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/LCCs-of-diesel-and-electric-buses-with-breakdown-of-their-ACs-MCs-OCs-and-DCs_fig1_349444014
Another showing them about the same: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Total-costs-per-bus-km-of-plug-in-all-electric-wireless-all-electric-conventional-pure_fig2_299415308

So it seems to vary a bit.