{"id":85065,"date":"2022-08-30T16:29:25","date_gmt":"2022-08-30T21:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=85065"},"modified":"2022-08-30T16:29:25","modified_gmt":"2022-08-30T21:29:25","slug":"85065","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=85065","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

A reality check on electric school buses.<\/a><\/p>\n

A recent Denver Post\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0describes how the Aurora school district added 7 electric school buses to its existing fleet of 151 total.\u00a0 Sadly the article focused mainly on the politics.\u00a0 Gov. Polis got in his talking points, the Republican quoted got in his, fun was had, and we all moved on with our day.\u00a0 Disappointing.\u00a0 For my taste, sound bites from politicians, particularly those of practiced and savvy career politicians like Polis, hide lots of detail which are important for us to know if we\u2019re to be able to assess the decisions of those we elect.\u00a0 Without details, without numbers, we\u2019re left with the imprecision of language (fertile ground indeed for politicians).<\/p>\n

The best way to summarize the difference between electric and internal combustion buses is that electric likely costs more upfront and less later, while internal combustion is cheaper to buy and likely more to operate.\u00a0 I\u2019m being careful to qualify my statements here because we don\u2019t have a good handle on costs yet (also \u201cinternal combustion\u201d is a large category with different fuels\/engines to consider).\u00a0 Looking into the matter has also convinced me that what you include\u2013and what you don\u2019t\u2013when calculating makes a big difference.\u00a0 Diesel buses are the standard choice across the country with electrics making steps into the market. Orders for electric buses are going up quickly, but are only about 1% of current rolling stock.<\/p>\n

Running the numbers<\/h3>\n

Analyses of bus costs (electric vs. internal combustion) abound, making it tough to decide whose numbers to rely on, but I chose to analyze those of California\u2019s electric utility (PGE).\u00a0 Their\u00a0estimator<\/a>\u00a0compares diesel to electric school buses, and should also remove any doubt that I\u2019m trying to shade things; PGE is a big\u00a0proponent of electric.<\/p>\n

From the PGE site, we learn that diesel buses are about $90K to buy and cost about $1.11 per mile to run, including maintenance and fuel.\u00a0 Electric buses cost $350K (the Post article has them at $375K) and cost about $0.20 per mile, including maintenance and fuel.\u00a0 Clearly it\u2019s cheaper to buy diesel and to run electric.\u00a0 The $260K cost differential between the two, however, effectively means that any district wanting to take advantage of lower operating costs is going to need help.\u00a0 Enter both the federal and Colorado state government to buy down the cost of the electric buses with big subsidies. Colorado and the feds pay 80% of the bus cost, and the district makes up the other 20%.<\/p>\n

All the same, there are some things missing from PGE\u2019s estimates.\u00a0 There is more capital investment to electrics than just their higher purchase price.\u00a0 Diesel is a known quantity.\u00a0 Shops have mechanics, tools, and knowledge about how to maintain them.\u00a0 Electric?\u00a0 Not so much.\u00a0 So add in the costs to train your mechanics and buy specialized tools.\u00a0 Oh, you\u2019ll also need to install chargers.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t find numbers on the increase in costs for tools and training, but PGE was helpful enough to give estimates on the chargers and maintenance:\u00a0 $13,750 per and $1,100 per year respectively.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m tempted to continue (increased sales tax costs and hidden costs like out of service time), but I think you get the point.<\/p>\n

Continuing with the finances, the last thing to consider is the time it will take us taxpayers to realize the savings on electric school buses.\u00a0 If you figure an average of 16,000 miles per year (the high end estimate on yearly mileage for a bus), and include only the costs laid out here, the payback on electric is about 20 years.\u00a0 That number was startling to me because 20 years was the top end, best-case-scenario I could find for the life of the bus batteries.\u00a0 In other words, right as we\u2019d start to realize the savings, the bus would stop working.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The details matter<\/h3>\n

As you find with a full accounting of costs, the discussion of electric bus performance is incomplete.\u00a0 With solid engineering you can design things to work nearly anywhere.\u00a0 As I tell my students though, nature doesn\u2019t give us things for free, and glibly misleading comments like Governor Polis\u2019s that the buses operate \u201cwithout issue\u201d in -40 degree Alaska don\u2019t tell you those important details.<\/p>\n

First, with regard to Alaska, it would have been more accurate for Polis to say \u201cbus<\/a>\u201d because there is only one electric school bus running in the whole state, hardly a reliable sample to draw sweeping inferences from.\u00a0 And it does operate down to -40, just not as well.\u00a0 Unlike internal combustion engines which scavenge waste heat to make the passengers comfortable, electric buses must divert some battery energy into heat (this is in addition to the basic physics of temperature:\u00a0 all reactions slow with lower temperature).\u00a0 To paraphrase the bus manager in Alaska, the amount of energy used to heat the bus could be more than the amount used to move it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That is, the electric equivalent of miles per gallon on the electric bus drops by about half.\u00a0 In Colorado, with its relatively milder winters, the step-down would be less, but would still be significant.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say that on the coldest days we put half our battery into heat.\u00a0 The 300 mile range would then drop to 150 miles.\u00a0 That\u2019s 18 miles straight out from the depot, once around a circle, and then back on one charge.<\/p>\n

One other thing you almost never hear about with electric vehicles is the charging rate when it\u2019s cold.\u00a0 I could not find specifics on buses, but a\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0on electric taxis in New York can give us a rough idea: charging rates for those batteries can be up to 3 times longer as you go from summer to winter.\u00a0 That means more time out of service and higher costs (i.e. more buses to do the same job).<\/p>\n

The right tool for the job<\/h3>\n

I look at most vehicles as tools.\u00a0 Just as there would be times when using a cutting torch would be a better choice than a cut off wheel, I think there are cases where electric buses would be a fine tool:\u00a0 places where there is the political will to not have as much internal combustion exhaust, where distances are small and without steep grades, and where there is some reserve in the district\u2019s resources to absorb the costs and problems attendant with the switch.\u00a0 Aurora may well be a fine location for them.\u00a0 Without those conditions, however, I don\u2019t think that they make sense (even with gigantic government subsidies to defray the cost); you\u2019re not picking the right tool for the job.\u00a0 Out in Logan County where I live, I don\u2019t think they would work well for the same reasons.<\/p>\n

Finally we arrive at the real point here.\u00a0 You can argue whether or not an electric bus is the best tool to cart out little ones around.\u00a0 It is as much a values judgment as an economic one and, in that sense, there are legitimate arguments to be made either way.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think you could fairly argue, however, that people who will not benefit from them (outside of the usual weak-tea and incomplete arguments about how electric vehicles make our whole environment better) should have to pay up to twice for them via both state and federal taxes.<\/p>\n

If Aurora or any other district wants to take the risk that electric is the wave of the future and pay the huge cost themselves, good for them. I\u2019d personally like to wait a bit and keep my money for my own family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A reality check on electric school buses. A recent Denver Post\u00a0article\u00a0describes how the Aurora school district added 7 electric school buses to its existing fleet of 151 total.\u00a0 Sadly the article focused mainly on the politics.\u00a0 Gov. Polis got in his talking points, the Republican quoted got in his, fun was had, and we all … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-econuts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85066,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85065\/revisions\/85066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}