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Buses World News

In brief: Worldwide montly news & informations about Buses, Busmakers, Passengers' and the Transport Industry

12.8.14

ELECTRIC BUSES * USA: Study

* Electric Buses overall best for CO2, health & price; hydrogen worst

Clean Technica, by Mike Barnard -August 11th, 2014: -- Recently on CleanTechnica there have been a couple of excellent pieces on the challenges with hydrogen fuel cells for vehicles in general, but how would they be for urban transit buses specifically? It’s instructive to look at an apples-to-apples comparisons of diesel, electric trolley and hydrogen buses traveling 100 kilometres in the USA.


Hydrogen is the most expensive fuel for buses, and it’s not the lowest greenhouse gas choice either. There’s no good argument for hydrogen fuel cell buses except in deeply polluted cities with coal-only grids, and that niche is shrinking not growing... Diesel buses are the lowest greenhouse gas choice on average today, but the health impacts of diesel emissions in densely populated urban centres makes them a difficult choice, especially when urban areas are attempting to clean up their air... Electric trolley buses are the cheapest to operate, have much lower health impacts than diesel buses and are already the best choice for greenhouse gas emissions in 20% of the US states. They will only improve as the grid decarbonizes. The smart money is on electrification of urban buses...


* Oregon - TriMet plugs electric bus into local routes. Chinese vehicles pose a challenge to stay charged on road

(Photo Credit: COURTESY TRIMET - TriMet picked up and dropped off passengers with the BTD electric bus it road tested in) 
Portland,ORE,USA -The Portland Tribune, by Jim Redden -12 August 2014: -- Portland planners believe more people are going to live in apartments along major transit lines in the future. That’s good for the environment, because it should reduce the number of cars on the road. But there’s one obvious drawback for those new residents — diesel buses are noisy and smelly, simultaneously enhancing and undermining livability wherever they go...TriMet is hoping to tap a new technology that could reduce that drawback: electric buses. Because they are propelled by electric motors, such buses are relatively quiet and emit no exhaust gases... TriMet has looked at two different kinds of electric buses in Portland. The first is made by BYD, a Chinese manufacturer... The second bus is made by Proterra, a Greenville, N.C., manufacturer. The company brought one of its electric buses to town last week, where it was displayed on Thursday at the downtown World Trade Center where PGE — a strong supporter of electric vehicles — is headquarters. TriMet then took it to one of their maintenance yards, where drivers and mechanics examined it... TriMet says BYD buses have the potential to substantially reduce operating cost savings, not only compared to its 40-foot diesel buses, but also compared to hybrid and compressed natural gas-powered buses on the market... BYD buses normally take two to four hours to recharge. But WAVE produces a supplemental charging system that will allow the buses to slightly recharge while in use... Proterra uses a different charging system — an elevated docking device that connects to the top of the bus and fully recharges its batteries in mere minutes... Proterra’s new bus costs $825,000, almost twice as much as an equivalent diesel bus. The recharging docks cost an additional $600,000...

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