We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Buses

27 Replies to “We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Buses”

1. This also falls under the heading “What could possibly go wrong!” It is my understanding that both the cities of Ottawa and Toronto want to expand their e-bus fleets into the suburbs in order to accelerate the “green energy” process. Must be nice to have access to lots of taxpayer money to pay for the inevitable fires and damage.

2. Oh the irony of it all. Environmental groups in Germany blocking Tesla Gigafactory.
   https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/german-environmentalist-groups-file-complaint-block-approval-teslas-gigafactory

3. Just as propane vehicles aren’t supposed to park in parking garages, perhaps a prohibition on electric vehicles is in order.

   1. That was in the linked article. One German city has already done that.

      Once the battery starts burning, it cannot be stopped. It’s like coal that way. You can cool it and smother it, but the moment it comes back in contact with air the burning returns like it had never left.

      1. Peat moss no..??

         1. I don’t know about bog fires, but a smothered and smoldering underground coal seam, exposed to air after 50 years, resumed burning at a mine I worked at (before my time, but I read up on the planning around moving out the burning coal and have some of the pictures.)

            I got the full story from a retired former miner, and it’s best shared over a few beers.

      2. The next set of rules, will be about parking. Imagine a parking lot, where there are 50 meters in every direction, from the next parking space.

         No parking within 50 meters of a parked battery fire. I mean electric vehicle.

4. Alice Coooper, Working Up a Sweat

   Spontaneous combustion
   Scientific fact
   But your approach to friction
   An unnatural act
   Bells I hear ain’t fire drills
   I hope you understand
   It’s a bona fide five alarmer
   Melting in my hand

   Seems like you need some pretty heavy duty automatic fire suppresion systems in these garages. Taxpayer subsidized of course.

5. L – How many eco-pantheist, social justice warriors will go up in flames, sacrificing themselves to on the altar to Gaia ?

   How many mayors will ride with the poor on an electric bus or do so on a diesel bus now ?

   I’d wager the number is the same as choose to live in the high crime neighbourhoods their
   policies create and subsidize.

6. Just wait for hydrogen fueled bus fleets….”Oh the humanity”

   1. K D E, now that should be downright terrifying. KABOOM!

      1. The use of hydrogen is more an engineering problem than a scientific one. Storage is the main issue.

         1. Yeah… H2 is such a small molecule that it leaks out through even metal containers, and in the process it embrittles the metal… and in order to store a mere 11 kg of the fuel (enough to run a car about 300 km), you need something on the order of a 125 liter tank, pressurized to just over 10,000 psi.

            Show of hands… who wants to drive around with a 10,000 psi tank full of highly explosive gas? Anyone? No one? Thought so.

            So the leaking hydrogen embrittles your tank, which catastrophically and without warning explodes at some unknown future time due to the high pressure, and immediately after, the hydrogen ignites… a twofer.

   2. Coming soon to a province near you.

      Plans for $1.3B net-zero hydrogen plant underway in Alberta’s capital region

      Looks like they plan to use liquid hydrogen for mobility. (trucks, buses, etc) Check the H2M in the flow diagram of the article.

      I remember when a magnesium plant was going to save our bacon,

      1. Liquid hydrogen requires constant cooling. Stop the cooling, and the pressure rises so catastrophically that your containment tank explodes… so they’re planning on generating hydrogen by steam reformation of natural gas (rather than just burning the natural gas), then using even more energy to keep that liquid hydrogen at cryogenic temperature… that makes sense, in Liberal La-La Land.

         You’re still spewing all the ‘pullooting’ carbon from the natural gas (unless you’re sequestering it, which will require even more energy), but now you’re using even more energy (steam reformation of CH4 and cryogenic cooling of H2) than if you just burned that CH4 directly. CH4 is the most efficient means of locking hydrogen into an easily usable, easily transportable form, and it comes right from the ground… except that 1 carbon atom for every 4 hydrogen atoms triggers the climate loons because Sciunce.

         1. Stop with all your white male conservation of energy hate speach!

            Were talking Green Energy! Totally different. Plus all the existing grifting jobs are taken. This plant opens new vistas in Green Grifting!

7. Hanover probably hasn’t seen that much black smoke since the last visit of No. 6 Bomb Group of the Royal Air Force…

8. Seeing as how high energy density batteries with non-flammable electrolytes exist, I can only assume that these fires are a feature, not a bug.

   1. The batteries could have been the ignition source, but one needs to consider what materials were used in the construction of the buses. If aluminium was part of the structure, it can burn and is difficult to extinguish. Then there are the various polymers and composite substances that were used for the seating and trim.

      It’s likely that damage from the battery fire itself would have been minimal had it been detected in time.

9. The carbon based energy that goes into mining, refining, fabrication and transportation of the batteries over their effective life (when they don’t explode) results in marginal if any savings of CO2 emissions over ICE vehicles even when the charging grid is 100% “non-emitting”.

   The greens know this and will kill this technology after they have finished killing ICE vehicles. Their goal is to allow only a small fraction of humanity to survive into their barely-out-of-the-stone-age dystopia. Societies that go along with them will eventually become slaves or meat for more robust societies.

   1. Only the so-called elites will have vehicles allowing for freedom of personal movement. The government will then ship people into far flung “Districts” where they will be stuck performing assigned tasks according to the social credit status.

      There will be NO SUCH THING as migrating to TX or FL to escape the madness. Nope. The government will ship you off to Somali-land MN or MI … to teach you a lesson of “tolerance” … and knock you off your Christian “high horse”. Thanks Dear Leader Obama!

      1. For a recent historical precedent, I present the Khmer Rouge.

         They are the TRUE role models of the eco-nazis

         1. Pol Pot died if old age peacefully in his bed.

10. But, but, but … your filthy, dirty, internal combustion engines catch fire too!

    1. Sure they do. But not like that Chinese bus did at the link. If that thing had gone on fire like that with people in it, they’d have -all- died. Less a fire, more of an explosion.

       When a diesel bus goes on fire, it takes a much longer time to really get going. And the fire department can put it out with water and foam. Electric fires, not so much.

    2. Yeah, about that “filthy, dirty, internal combustion engines” bit… I know you’re being sarcastic, but allow me to present a real-world counterpoint.

       I’ve been perturbing to no end a climate kook over at CFACT who was bragging about his Tesla… claimed it was “over 90% efficient!”.

       Except Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and DOE show that the efficiency of the US grid system is 34.83%:

       https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/images/energy/us/Energy_US_2020.png

       … the Tesla charger is rated at 92% efficiency at 240 V / 24 A and 94% efficiency at 240 V / 40A or 80A, the Tesla battery has a maximum efficiency (energy in:energy out) of 90% and minimum of 80% (dependent upon age and use), and the Tesla vehicle has an overall drivetrain efficiency of 93%.

       That gives a ‘fuel to wheels’ efficiency of:
       100 * .3483 * 0.94 * 0.9 * 0.93 = 27.1088856% “fuel to wheels” efficiency, which is comparable to an ICE-powered vehicle. A low-compression engine will have on the order of 24% efficiency, whereas a high-compression engine can reach 34%.

       So when charging his 100 kWh battery, assuming charging from 50%, he’s burning 184.4414 kWh worth of fuel, assuming maximum efficiency all along the line.

       Now, he lives in Illinois, where 27.3% of electricity is generated by coal-fired plants, meaning that 50.3525 kWh worth of his energy is coming from coal… he’s essentially driving a 100% coal-powered car, and burning an additional 134.0889 kWh worth of fuel from other sources just for the fun of it.

       He hates it. LOL

       That, combined with my warning him not to park his vehicle in the garage immediately after driving it, or charge it in the garage, while showing him story after story after story of vehicles that have burst into violent flames in a matter of seconds (just as we saw for those buses), burning the structure as well… well, it’s got him feeling blue and more than a little paranoid about his coal-powered fire trap vehicle. LOL

       ASIDE:
       ———-
       I’ve found that properly-done water injection (or combining water with the fuel, which I’ve been experimenting with), increases engine torque output and efficiency, as does using tungsten disulfide (WS2) in the engine oil. Using WS2 in the transmission oil (if you have a manual transmission with a dry clutch), rear-end gears (for rear-wheel drive vehicles) and in the wheel bearings increases drivetrain efficiency. WS2 is one of the most lubricious substances known to man… in the engine I’ve been experimenting with, the first time I added it to the oil, internal friction dropped so much that the engine idled ~700 RPM faster than normal, until the idle air control valve actuator dialed back.
       ———-

11. “Where’s my flaming car?”