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Caught a bus home from the City yesterday and discovered it was on of Norwich’s new fleet of double decker E busses. Very impressive. Quite smooth, accelerated quickly and best of all didn’t belch out black diesel fumes. Definitely the future for urban public transport.
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Over optimistic estimate of cold weather range. I guess they will
have to reschedule charging intervals. Good job it’s warmer in the UK. My average range drop is about 20% in winter so do end up charging more often this time of year.
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I'm surprised with the Norway thing as it's well known how much the cold affects electric vehicles.
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Yeah but those buses are Chinese. I'm sure their failure to operate in the cold is all part of the grand Chinese plan to noble the bourgeois west...
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They are Polish actually although the batteries are Chinese.
THE Norwich busses are made in the UK
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They’ve had problems in Sweden as well. It seems someone underestimated how much energy it takes to heat a whole uninsulated bus when its minus 5 or 10 outside. Either that, or they were prepared to ignore it in the pursuit of the green agenda.
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I wonder if there's space inside the bus to install a diesel engined generator?
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>> I wonder if there's space inside the bus to install a diesel engined generator?
>>
They just need a diesel heater, although they may need another solution for a/c in the summer, but that’s a problem for another day. Alternatively, the peasants will just have to put up with it and be happy they’re saving the world. Surely a small price to pay.
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I wonder how the Chinese manage? They currently have a fleet of over a quarter of a million electric bussses. Indeed how are the good people of London managing with their electric busses?
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The Chinese ones have an extra “s”, so maybe they’re better?
;-)
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Do you know I wondered about the spelling? Strange how you can read and write a word hundreds of times and then it looks wrong either way.
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"Do you know I wondered about the spelling?"
In case of any lingering doubt, it's "buses".
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The passengers are probably not too inclined to complain.
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>> tinyurl.com/ysma7lva
>>
>> Not so good in Oslo!
The report there alludes to a cold snap.
Has it been exceptionally cold in Scandinavia this year?
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>> Has it been exceptionally cold in Scandinavia this year?
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It’s been a bit colder than average this year, despite global warming.
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>> It’s been a bit colder than average this year, despite global warming.
It's climate change remember :-P
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The latest storm is hitting Gothenburg, and the news is reporting many bus routes have been cancelled. According to the bus company spokesman it’s because it’s a hilly area, and electric buses don’t like snow. He’ll be sent on a re-education course now, for being honest.
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>> According to the bus company spokesman it’s because it’s a hilly area, and
>> electric buses don’t like snow.
Is that another batteries/cold issue or lack of grip etc?
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>>Is that another batteries/cold issue or lack of grip etc?
Will be batteries I suspect - cold weather isn't great, but also much higher rolling resistance on fresh snow likely increases electron consumption.
Grip should be irrelevant - if a 40 tonne truck can travel with the correct tyres, a 10 tonne bus should be fine.
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>> Grip should be irrelevant - if a 40 tonne truck can travel with the correct
>> tyres, a 10 tonne bus should be fine.
By grip I meant getting traction on the snow/ice. I can spin the wheels on my car and I'm sure I've seen buses do it in the past although one suspects that these days electronics would stop it.
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Scandi countries mandate winter/studded tyres - makes a massive difference to grip.
Certainly remember going to school on the bus in the 80s as it writhed along freshly snowed-on roads!
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Too much torque I imagine, and possibly poor controllability. Buses in general seem to be designed now to be impossible to drive smoothly. Add in DC motors with full torque available from a standstill and you're going nowhere:)
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>> Too much torque I imagine, and possibly poor controllability.
Add in drivers who don't know how to smoothly apply power.
I once sold a Triumph Vitesse, that promptly kangarooed off down the road, before being returned by the buyer saying it was faulty. The driver was flooring the pedal and being surprised at the acceleration, releasing it. The deceleration was throwing them forward, causing the pedal to be pressed, etc, etc!
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"Buses in general seem to be designed now to be impossible to drive smoothly"
Have you been on an electric bus? I think you would be impressed by how smooth not to mention quiet the drive actually is.
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Had some ‘interesting’ trips to secondary school by coach back in the day. There was the time when the driver pulled too far onto the verge on a country road. Coach slithered sideways into a shallow ditch and the driver had to get a local farmer, tractor and chain to extricate the vehicle.
Then there was the time when the back of the bus started shuddering shortly before both rear wheels on one side made a bid for freedom. That was before they used those brightly coloured arrows on the wheel nuts. Had to walk the last couple of miles to school. On arriving late, the teacher accepted the excuse that the wheels had fallen off the bus.
Worst aspect of the daily coach travel was seemingly three quarters of the kids (and the driver) smoking. Spent the whole time stinking of smoke.
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Driving home from the out-laws yesterday behind an Ember coach.
Noted the green flash on the registration plates.
www.ember.to/
From their FAQs:
"Our buses can go up to 200 miles on a single charge and we charge them multiple times per day. This allows them to travel almost 200,000 miles per year. By using the buses this intensively, we keep lifetime emissions (including manufacturing the vehicle) to a tiny fraction of a diesel equivalent.
Our buses use LFP batteries which are cobalt free. We're looking to reuse the batteries once they have lost capacity, for instance using them as grid storage to help balance out demand for renewable energy."
Last edited by: Lygonos on Tue 26 Dec 23 at 10:04
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Some are not so keen.
"Trump wishes electric car supporters 'rot in hell' in Truth Social Christmas message"
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>> Some are not so keen.
>>
>> "Trump wishes electric car supporters 'rot in hell' in Truth Social Christmas message"
>>
He seems to be very bitter.
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He also "posted a video of his cameo in "Home Alone 2" and a meme claiming "SANTA VOTED TRUMP." (Santa Claus is not a US citizen, and his vote would have been illegal.)"
www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-electric-car-supporters-rot-hell-christmas-truth-social-2023-12?r=US&IR=T
The bloke is quite clearly unhinged.
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Quite... but I have a horrible feeling about the next election.
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>> He also "posted a video of his cameo in "Home Alone 2" and a meme
>> claiming "SANTA VOTED TRUMP." (Santa Claus is not a US citizen, and his vote would
>> have been illegal.)"
>>
>> www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-electric-car-supporters-rot-hell-christmas-truth-social-2023-12?r=US&IR=T
>>
>> The bloke is quite clearly unhinged.
>>
And a hypocrite. How much did he complain about fake voters etc. in the last election!?
Perhaps they were his?
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Our buses can go up to 200 miles on a single charge and we charge
>> them multiple times per day. This allows them to travel almost 200,000 miles per year.
Something doesn’t add up here. They’d have to do 500 miles a day and charge 3 times, 365 days a year, and if they average 30mph (unlikely) they’d be on the road 20 hrs/day, again, very unlikely. Usual green exaggeration, me thinks.
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0) An electric bus costs ~£4-500k and has an operating life of ~10 years. The annual cost before even turning a fare winning wheel using a discount rate of (say) 10% is £65k pa.
A diesel bus costs ~£300k. However the average age of diesel bus fleets is ~8 years - largely expensed years ago. Many are 10+ years old - intensive use will bring forward their early replacement with obvious cash flow impacts.
An electric bus uses about 2kwh per mile at a cost of ~60p. A diesel bus does ~5-6mpg at a cost of ~£1.20p per mile. Diesel is unsurprisingly more polluting and noisy, and likely to be significantly more costly for maintenance and repair given the average age of the fleet.
A bus company with a longer term strategy to transition to electric may maximise the use of cheaper to run and maintain new electric buses over operation of older time served diesel equivalents. This defers earlier replacement of older diesel busses until absolutely necessary.
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>>Something doesn't add up here. They'd have to do 500 miles a day and charge 3 times, 365 days a year, and if they average 30mph (unlikely) they'd be on the road 20 hrs/day, again, very unlikely. Usual green exaggeration, me thinks.
They run between cities on the motorways and as coaches can do 70mph.
Dundee-Edinburgh is down as 90 minute journey (62 miles)
Dundee-Glasgow is 100 minutes (81 miles)
I suspect they can average 40mph overall and seem to run 24 hours going by ticket availability.
Add in charging periods (presumably during driver breaks) and they're probably not exaggerating much.
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>> Buses in general seem to be designed now to be impossible to drive smoothly.
Lazy driving.
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>> Lazy driving.
That's my expereince too. They can be driven smoothly but it needs a bit of application.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Sat 30 Dec 23 at 15:33
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Having dug around the Swedish and Norwegian press a little more, I’ve managed to find a little more information on the electric bus problems.
One issue is with traction, especially on bendy buses. Because there is no heavy diesel engine and transmission over the rear wheels, there is a problem with traction on snow and ice. Another is the power delivery form the motor, which can be a bit sudden and powerful, compared to a lazy diesel engine and automatic transmission.
The other problem mentioned was that of heating. Apparently they are fitted with diesel fired heaters as they demand a massive amount of heat. These heaters are run on HVO diesel which is supposedly environmentally friendly because it comes from waste product, but it still chucks out the same gases and particulates as regular diesel. In order to save money, and trying to be environmentally friendly, the heating gets turned down, or off.
It appears to be another case of green washing, where any environmental benefits are at best limited, and come at a pretty hefty financial cost.
Last edited by: Dave on Tue 2 Jan 24 at 18:13
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Aye they have their own version of the Daily Mail there too.
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Another bus company up north, Skelefteå, is having electric bus problems with the very cold weather they’re having. According to the lady in charge of the bus company, they have to be “taken indoors a few times a day to warm up”.
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Skeleftea is in the far North of Sweden, virtually within the Arctic Circle. They are currently enduring a particularly cold spell with temperatures today down to -24C.
From their website:
“The extremely cold temperatures are expected to continue on Friday, which will cause some changes in public transport. The reason we don't run all day is because the buses need to be brought in to warm up, so we can ensure as much traffic as possible. Everything to minimize the risk of travelers having to wait outside in extreme cold and to be able to ensure an acceptable working environment for our drivers.”
Obviously their experience precludes the operation of electric buses in Croydon.
Last edited by: CGNorwich on Fri 5 Jan 24 at 09:49
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This may be a silly question, but why just electric busses?
We had teams with overhead wires for decades in the 1900’s.
A form of hybrid system could work today, overhead power on main roads where power is needed and on tight city streets where slow speed suggests lower power requirements, an internal battery is used!?
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Trolley buses are indeed a possible solution in many places but I think their major drawback is the cost of the infrastructure and lack of flexibility. You can’t easily divert a trolley bus although I guess if it had a traction battery that would help overcome that problem. Many countries do still have trolley buses. I travelled on one in Budapest a few years back.
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Huddersfield and Bradford both had trolleys when I was a kid. The wires were there for the trams before that, not sure quite how compatible they were between the two. Some of the sub stations and quite a lot of the old poles can still be seen around Huddersfield. They ran on c. 600V DC.
I'm surprised electric cars are doing so well in a place as cold as Norway. I wouldn't want one in winter even here for longer journeys. I like to be warm, and certainly not hypothermic if I were to get stuck on a motorway over night. Do any electric cars have diesel heating? We had a canal boat with an Eberspacher running wet central heating.
Last edited by: Manatee on Fri 5 Jan 24 at 12:55
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>>I'm surprised electric cars are doing so well in a place as cold as Norway
98% of Norway's electricity is supplied by hydro-electric.
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>> 98% of Norway's electricity is supplied by hydro-electric.
That fact was floating round my head too. Bearing in mind they have serious freezing and snow etc for several months on the bounce they probably deal with it better than we do.
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Naturally being stuck on a motorway overnight in a snowdrift is a major concern for all of us. It happens all the time although perhaps less frequently around here as we don’t have any motorways.
You will be pleased therefore to note however that you are likely to stay warm for just as long if not longer in a stationary EV as you will in a ICE car with the added benefit that you will not run the risk of being asphyxiated by exhaust fumes from a blocked exhaust.
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It's a bit like the spare wheel debate. 99+% of the time it doesn't matter.
I try to have half a tank minimum in the car in winter, plus boots and warm clothing. And it has proved useful.
I don't worry about a blocked exhaust.
I understand that Norway has cheap energy, but the range and recharging time issues are still there, and worse in low temperatures.
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Assuming a typical EV with a 60KWh battery half charged when you are stranded 30KWh powering a 2KW resistive heater on continuously will last for 15 hours. No need to worry.
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Simplistically:
The energy in an EV battery with 30kwh remaining will take an EV 90-120 miles. Using a resistive heater this is broadly much the same as the energy in an ICE with ~3 gallons left in the tank.
However some EVs are fitted with heat pumps with an coefficient of efficiency of ~3. Thus an EV with 30kwh remaining may have the heating equivalent of an ICE with up to 9 gallons of fuel.
A heat pump in an EV is a direct benefit to vehicle range and justifies a higher cost. As ICE heaters use waste heat, a heat pump would not normally make sense - although I recall some vehicles typically operating in very cold climates will have separate diesel heaters.
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Your 30kWh will keep your heated seat on for about 2 weeks.
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Of course whilst you won’t freeze to death whilst sitting in the snowdrift you do face the near certainty of immolation in a lithium fuelled inferno.
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...TfL have found a way of keeping passengers warm in this cold spell.. ;-)
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67944657
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Also in today's news but tucked away in SW England.... This guy's bus looked even worse
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-67944753
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A comforting balance in 2 bus fires - an electric which may or may not have been caused by its means of propulsion, and the other by an aircon unit in a traditional charabanc.
Perhaps there is no need for the predictable response from the anti-EV crowd!
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But it does not address battery powered buses.
8o(
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Electric busses - neiltoo
