Things I Learned About Battery Electric Buses (BEBs) That the Mainline Media Seems to Ignore

Local Media Sometimes Carry the Stories but They Tend to Remain Local - You Have to Dig to Find Them

“So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” John 8:31-32

I’m so thankful for Substack writers. Rather than watching the establishment news, for the past year I’ve been getting my information from researchers and reporters that go into depth on the subjects where they have expertise. I subscribe to about 2 dozen, and automatically receive their writings by email, some daily; some weekly. The quality of writing, research, and reporting is very high. Typical ‘establishment’ news, on the other hand, tends to be ideological, politicized, and biased, even to the point of deliberate deception.

The area of study that has really fascinated me for the past year is all related to the hyper phobia of climate change, and since by that what is really meant is global warming caused, supposedly, by human produced CO2 emissions. The ‘science’ behind this is extremely shaky and even includes some data that was falsified and some suppression of true data.

Which will you believe? Biased, politicized pseudo-scientists dependent on grants for funding? Or honest, qualified scientists who have nothing to gain (and often everything to lose) by telling us the truth? … from Stu Turley’s “Energy News Beat” Jan 2: “John F. Clauser, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum mechanics, has decided to sign the World Climate Declaration of Clintel with its central message “there is no climate emergency”. Clauser is the second Nobel Laureate to sign the  declaration, Dr. Ivar Giaever was the first. The number of scientists and experts signing the World Climate Declaration is growing rapidly and now approaching 1600 people.”

Global warming is probably cyclical and its cause may not even be from CO2 emissions. In fact, we need to remember that CO2 is very beneficial to plant growth, so it may be quite a mistake to try to eliminate it.

There may be some secret, evil agendas in the worldwide attempt to stop global warming from CO2 emissions. Elites like Al Gore and Bill Gates seem willing to sacrifice the rights of individuals for their ‘cause’; they seem willing to tyrannically force everyone, if possible, to do their will. Globalists in the UN seem to have an agenda of using a wished for one world government power to spread the wealth in the name of fighting climate change, enriching themselves (those in power) in the process. Some young folks who have been brainwashed to think the world is going to end in ten years if we don’t stop CO2 emissions have decided that life is an enemy - there are too many people and there is too much progress - they would be in favor of reducing the world’s population, and I don’t see how that could be anything but evil - especially since God’s first commandment to Adam and Eve was to “…be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth…”

The byproducts of the global warming phobia are all the attempts to find and subsidize alternate energy sources; anything but fossil fuels which emit CO2, the combination of carbon and oxygen, when burned. The three elephants in the room are wind, solar, and electric vehicles. The myth that wind and sunlight are free, and EVs are ‘carbon-free’, was bought by non-scientists, non-engineers, and non-businessmen in governments to legislate huge subsidies to build out massive wind and solar farm projects at the same time as legislating lots of new regulations pushing toward phasing out ICEs (internal combustion engines) and blessing us with a transportation world of electric, non-polluting vehicles. I wrote about a thought experiment that would take this unrealistic idea to its logical, inevitable conclusion: “Imagine the Electricification of Everything”

The subsidies were so large that no doubt many companies got on the bandwagon just because they could see ways to grab that money for their profit, risk-free, because if their project failed it was only the government that would lose money. But for many, the projects were so doomed to failure that they lost money even with the subsidies, and had to file bankruptcy. Solyndra, Nikola, and Proterra are just a few examples.

Today I’ll just focus on why battery electric buses (BEBs) are not all they were cracked up to be, without getting into the problems with wind and solar farms, or electric cars and trucks, which I’ll save for another day. Also, if you missed it, check out this earlier post that has a ton of reasons why battery electric vehicle sales are doing very poorly.

electric buses

caption for above photo; story below “A number of battery powered electric buses sit idle and out of commission in the Foothill Transit Pomona Operations Yard …"(Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)”

Electric buses are very expensive.

“An average diesel transit bus costs around $500,000, compared with $750,000 for an electric bus, and a diesel school bus costs around $110,000 compared with $230,000 for an electric school bus” publicpower.org - written in 2019- I guess you can double those numbers today…but the point is, EVs cost more.

crack up

Heavy batteries cracking bus chassis: This story about Philadelphia’s failing EV bus fleet is two years old, but hasn’t gotten near enough attention. Since the first trial buses didn’t have enough range on even the easiest, level routes, the transit company asked the manufacturer for more battery power. This added weight is probably what caused the cracking. “…the underlying problem is that batteries are simply far heavier than a fossil-fuel tank and yet provide less energy output (emphasis mine)— leading manufacturers to add more hefty batteries while cutting frame weight to compensate.”

read more about Philadelphia’s battery electric bus (BEB) -in excerpt

level streets only, please

In San Francisco, an EV bus couldn’t make it up one of those hills. Not only that, but its brakes didn’t hold, and it bumped into several cars as it rolled backwards. Story here

similar problem in Cape Town “eleven buses… were unable to make it up many of the hills in the city” story is part of lengthy quote from Thomas Morris, below

Jackson Wyoming bought 8 EV buses but for about a million each, but none are working. Story here

going electric means adding expensive charging systems on top of paying through the nose for the buses themselves

In Michigan, a school district took advantage of heavy subsidies to buy 4 electric buses. They found out that “Electric buses are approximately five times more expensive than regular buses” and the infrastructure for charging, etc “which was originally estimated to be only about $50,000, give or take, for those four buses ended up being more like $200,000." Story here

BEBs barely work in cold weather

Edmonton, Canada bought 60 electric buses a few years ago, and now “most of the city's 60 electric buses aren't fit to be on the roads”, according to CBC News. “the range of the electric buses is shorter than Proterra stated — "an issue that is exacerbated in Edmonton's cold winters", and “the city has incurred damages of $1.3 million US, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in internal labour costs and replacement parts. The city also spent more than $200,000 on "battery blankets" (emphasis mine LOL) to keep batteries warm and working.”

“the Minnesota-focused news outlet MinnPost reported that several of the state’s largest cities have encountered significant obstacles in their quest to achieve planet-friendly public transit…In subzero conditions — a staple of Minnesota winters — electric buses operate at only a fraction of their supposed 150-mile capacity.” (emphasis mine) Story here

better have deisel or nat gas for backup

Foothill Transit, in southern California, “had 13 idled battery-electric buses out of 32 in its fleet. At one point, the agency indicated of its electric buses were not operating during 2019 and 2020. In addition to the electric buses, the agency maintains 341 compressed natural gas buses.” (thank goodness!) not to worry, the taxpayers will take care of the losses “Of the 13 idled electric buses, three were manufactured in 2010 and delivered to Foothill Transit in 2011, costing $1 million each. These were paid for by taxpayers out of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 passed by Congress after the Great Recession, said Felicia Friesema, a Foothill Transit spokesperson. For the rest, billed at $847,496 each, the federal government covered 86% of the cost combined with a 14% match from the transit agency.” Story here

We could go on and on -here’s a sample

the devastating effect of low temperatures on batteries

I found this enlightening study by Thomas Morris, Power System Operations Controller, which was originally published April 28, 2020

“Henning, Thomas and Smyth (2019) studied the effect of temperature on vehicle range and found that for temperature drops from 50 - 60 deg to 22 - 32 deg Fahrenheit (10 - 16 deg to -5 - 0 deg C) BEBs lost around 32.1% efficiency (6). The study also noted “The Study Team was unable to identify previous studies examining the issue of diminishing fuel efficiency for battery-electric bus fleets operating in near- or sub-freezing temperatures”, which goes some way in explaining the unexpectedness of temperature issues in the pilots described below, and the importance of these discoveries.

High temps are bad, too, because of air conditioning “Among the many problems that plagued the LA Metro electric bus project, the LA Times in their investigation on the trial reported that the unpredictable driving ranges were impaired by both heat and cold (7).

City of Albuquerque returned 20 buses! “A similarly unsuccessful trial, with multiple problems, was that of the City of Albuquerque. Amongst other issues which eventually led to the return of the twenty buses ordered, batteries overheating (emphasis mine) in the summer was reported as a major concern (8). Indianapolis also found their range greatly affected by the cold (9) as did Zhengzhou, (wherever that is) whose BEB range are significantly limited by the cold, and demand an extra hour of charging in the winter. In Izmir (?) it was reported that the necessity of maintaining thirteen hours of air conditioning while travelling over 150km was a difficulty for manufacturers and an electric bus trialled in Phoenix in 2019 could only achieve two thirds of its advertised range in the summer owing to the drain on the battery that the air conditioning posed (9). 

Even heavy rain can be a problem “In addition to temperature, rain, snow and ice can impact the range and behaviour of BEBs. In Shenzen (?) for example, battery charge was observed to drop during heavy summer rains (9). Regenerative braking is often turned off in slippery conditions and as such when it’s icy or wet the performance of BEBs can be significantly affected (6).”

“Owing to their large batteries, BEBs are significantly heavier than their diesel or hybrid equivalents. Steep terrain requires more power from their batteries to provide the torque to fight the increased gravity. As such hilly routes will drain their batteries far more rapidly than those with flatter terrains. The extra power required to navigate steep topographies has posed a challenge to multiple projects studied.

“In Cape Town, South Africa, the country’s first electric bus project has faced significant challenges owing to terrain. The eleven buses part of the trial were unable to make it up many of the hills in the city (11). The aforementioned LA Metro trial also had trouble with terrain, with reports of stalling on steep hills and the incapacity of the BEBs to make it up the slopes on some parts of the routes.”

now add this thought

The more electric vehicles we have, the more dependent we become on the electric grid. The electric power grid is more stressed and vulnerable to rolling blackouts and even prolonged blackouts than ever before. See “Energy Bad Boys” post on how vulnerable the grid is. Disaster is looming.

next week, if not sooner - a focus on lithium-ion battery fires