The Low Hanging Fruit Method to Electrifying Transport
The topic of transportation, both personal and public, is a contentious one. We are living in a world where everyone has a strong view that they are determined to stand by, no matter what the evidence might say. This ‘clan-ish’ way of seeing things is entirely obvious when we talk about cars and buses. There are those screaming from the rooftops about how the world is going to end because of carbon emissions and there are those who are firmly of the belief that their fuel efficient car can hardly be causing such chaos. Let me tell you straight from the start, I don’t care which side of the fence you’re on. As far as I’m concerned, the argument isn’t clean or dirty. It’s cheap or expensive.
Public transport in New York City, where I live, is the lifeline that keeps this madhouse running, for the most part. New York hosts the largest bus fleet in the country and also one of the slowest because of something called traffic. The fleet is made up of Diesel, Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and Hybrid powered vehicles. Buses of these three types of fuel average 2.28, 1.7 and 3.19 miles per gallon respectively. I’ll just let that sink in for the moment.
I have been bitten by the electric bug and believe in the future of electric transportation. My belief lies in the inherent efficiency of the system of using electricity to make propulsion happen. The fact that an electric motor does not idle when the vehicle is at a standstill is the biggest draw for me. I’ve spent my adult life frustrated at drivers who refuse to turn off idling engines. Then there’s your typical urban start/stop/gridlock driving cycle within which it’s extremely difficult for an internal combustion engine to run at its most efficient range, usually a steady 40 to 60 mph. A recent study in California, linked below, shows that battery electric buses averaged an equivalent of 17.48 miles per gallon versus the 4.51 averaged by that area’s CNG buses. That is 3.8 times as efficient. A quantum leap, completely unheard of in the automobile industry. Usually, the management guys in Detroit are happy to announce a 3.8% improvement in fuel efficiency in their latest models. This is 380%! This offers a massive reduction in actual energy usage. Even if that energy is still produced using fossil fuels, the reduction in usage per bus is dramatic. Improving the cleanliness and source of this energy can, and should occur independently of whether we have electric buses or not; that’s a different subject for a different article. I’m just talking about efficiency here.
So this brings me to the point of my story. If, today, New York City replaced its fleet of 5700+ buses with electric vehicles, the city could save tons of money on running costs and maintenance which would more than pay for the payback in costs incurred by such a large capital expenditure. Forget the cleaner air. Forget the more silent ride for passengers. Forget the reduced noise. Forget saving the planet. This is about saving money for New York City. If planners can understand the dollar sign, and we all know they do, they ought to be running to electrify their fleets in a heartbeat. The infrastructure of charging points where buses stop to turn around their journeys is entirely feasible. Furthermore, the average bus travels 2300 miles in a month, just under 80 miles per day. Even today’s battery tech can charge a bus up for 80 miles of use from the depot. In reality, the tech is already capable of 100 mile+ range easily, thus negating the need for many charging points.
The cost-of-bus figures in my sources linked below are already old. Such is the pace of improvement in battery technology that costs are dropping in double digit percentage terms each year. If you are concerned that this figure will be huge, hold on for a second. It is also entirely possible to retrofit the existing fleet with batteries and motors while junking or recycling the huge engines and gearboxes. Yes, these buses may be compromised in terms of efficiency versus brand new buses, but it makes sense to do this for the newer vehicles on the fleet so that the whole plan gets cheaper, faster and less dependent on a mega order for new buses. It’s also a more sustainable way of moving forward. There, I said the ‘s’ word! The older buses are being replaced in any case, so those can be replaced by brand new ground-up electric buses. Today, on a smaller scale, enthusiasts are replacing their conventional engines with electric drives in a number of old classic cars. The space needed in the engine bay is sufficient to get everything done and have a respectable range of 100+ miles on a charge. Battery and motor technology is extremely scalable, so this will not create any barriers in a larger vehicle. I must also point out that electric motors are not a new technology. The subway has been using them for a century, so we know how good they are and how much abuse they can take.
Now you may ask where all this extra electricity will come from. Today, it can come from anywhere. The point of this exercise is that you improve the energy efficiency of your buses by nearly 400% and ignore the power source. In the future, a coal plant may be replaced by something cleaner or the MTA, in charge of buses and subways in the city, might install a solar roof on their bus and subway car depots. A new wind farm might come up. Whatever. That exercise will only further reduce the environmental impact of public buses in the city. A single subway train consisting of R160 type subway cars in New York has a power output of 4480 kilowatts. Charging buses at night, when the subway runs a lower frequency schedule is totally feasible. There is enough power in this city to charge every bus you need to charge. Charging can be planned to coincide with lower electricity loads, and so on. This is really the easiest part of the equation, only requiring smart people making smart, calculated schedules.
So, why the low-hanging fruit thing? Well, buses are state or city owned everywhere in the world. If they aren’t, they are likely extremely regulated and need to comply with rules in order to run. This makes the bus a soft target for electrification, something easy to do with large and obvious benefits. If a government chooses, it can set a deadline for buses to run on electric drive and the operator will essentially have to follow this order. It takes a lot to convince people to make environmentally responsible decisions. The bus route, pardon the pun, involves the less challenging sales pitch of convincing cities to save money, which they always want to do! By replacing vehicles that do not have a range anxiety complication and that do not run on the highway, where internal combustion engines are at least somewhat efficient, you will be able to reduce energy usage, demonstrate the advantages of the technology and save money that can go to increasing service and thus creating a domino effect of improvements in the city.
I can end this article with a shout out to all of you who care about things like pollution and the environment. Don’t try and shove the ‘end of the world’ argument down people’s throats. Stop worrying about trying to change individuals. If you really want to change start with cities and governments. Get them to change their bus fleets. Show them how much money can be saved. The impact by switching a single bus, that consumes 12,000 gallons of diesel a year, is the equivalent of replacing 30 private cars, assuming 12,000 miles a year at 30 miles per gallon. If you electrify New York’s fleet, that’s 171,000 cars less worth of pollution in the city.
P.S. Cities also have garbage trucks, construction vehicles, delivery vehicles, other local buses and many other types of vehicles that are huge fuel users, cover short distances and are noisy and dirty. These also operate on a permit based system that is controlled by rules. Another example of low hanging fruit, ripe for picking.
Sources:
1: https://cleantechnica.com/2016/02/22/electric-buses-efficient-as-he-nrel-finds/
2:http://www.columbia.edu/~ja3041/Electric%20Bus%20Analysis%20for%20NYC%20Transit%20by%20J%20Aber%20Columbia%20University%20-%20May%202016.pdf
