Where I come from, we call this “gettin’ an education”.
Emile Lauzzana, the environmental sustainability director of Michigan’s fourth-largest school district, recently told the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education that the district’s electric bus fleet has had “a lot of downtime and performance issues.” […]
“We’ve been learning a lot about this technology,” Lauzzana also said. “Electric buses are approximately five times more expensive than regular buses, and the electrical infrastructure, which was originally estimated to be only about $50,000, give or take, for those four buses ended up being more like $200,000.”
Lauzzana explained the district attempted to utilize “Vehicle to Grid” interconnection, which helps push energy back to the grid when buses are not being used, but that the “technology was not working.”
“I will say that I have a number of colleagues in different states who are facing similar challenges,” he added, noting the differences between electric cars versus buses. “For the school bus market, it’s been challenging for us.”
This is what happens when you have an “environmental sustainability director” but not a “transportation reliability director”.
^^^ truer words never uttered ^^^
And as much as we all loathe the dreaded HR Directors … the DEI Directors are 1,000x worse.
Reality keeps on teaching, people keep on refusing to learn.
Being duped by trying to turn school buses electric isn’t going well at all either.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/200-billion-electric-school-bus-bust
Breaking down needs a whole new fleet of repair people too…
What’s going to happen when one of these things finally goes on fire? And it will, if the charging technology is as dodgy as the article implies.
But hey, it’s only money, and a bus-load of little kids, right? No biggie.
And when they ignite, the fire cannot be extinguished. Roasted kiddies if they don’t or can’t get out. What kind of moron imagines that these things are safe enough to put children into?
Good question. What kind of moron?
School boards. Provincial governments. The federal government. The teacher’s union. (Teachers ride in those buses too, in some districts.) Academics.
Any Greenie ever…
It isn’t that they think these things are safe, even an idiot can see they’re not. It’s that they think the sacrifice of children to Moloch is a small price to pay. And don’t forget, those kids won’t grow up to breed, which is a win to a Greenie.
I’ve been experimenting with swimming with bricks tied to my legs and rocks in my pockets. Except for the tendency to sink, it’s working well.
Used to be that people who made decisions that turned out to be ill-conceived blunders, such as this one, were allowed to resign instead of getting fired. But that’s considered barbaric today so now they stick around making more bad decisions.
Worse, they get promoted.
When you can STEAL ALL YOU WANT FROM TAXPAYERS to fund the daycare/babysitting demands of parasitic parents, there is no limit to how much you will waste 9n virtue signaling.
A turbo-diesel Thomas Bus w/AC runs about $95k with the standard options at the first price brake for a multi-bus order. The Thomas has a 100 gallon fuel tank with a 600-700 mile range and a 25-30 year useful life. A similar EV school bus from Blue Bird is $560k and go about 100 miles on a charge. Batteries last 10-15 years.
Your being quite generous on the batteries life as well as range…hills are a real bitch in winter…
I watched some Ontario-based rent-seeking E-bus manufacturer on BNN a few days ago say that they required 200 grand each in subsidies. The insanity will persist until we admit that we are broke, balance budgets, and eliminate debt. Elected sociopaths of the common Jacobin and Bolshevik variety and shrouded in green will never stop unless unelected or eliminated by revolution.
I am so glad we didn’t have electric buses when I rode the bus to school everyday. Living in a rural area with miles between the farms. We would have frozen to death on the 30 mile run to town in -40 weather.
The proverbial “10 miles to school, uphill both ways, short pants in winter” that your grandad used to tell you about!
No just a simple statement of fact. In Alberta the temperature does get down to -40. Some of the bus routes took well over an hour and a half to complete. I do remember 1969 which had a very very cold January. We never missed a days school. The bus we were in did break down one day. It was 45 below when we left the farm. We were very fortunate that a county truck happened by and was able to get another bus out to pick us up. We all survived. The really strange part was on that day there was a young Hutterite man standing by the road. He was leaving the colony and was hitch hiking east. I still admire his courage.
Massive failure is what you get when ideologues are in charge instead of someone with an education in physics. Wishful thinking never trumps physics. Ever. No matter how hard you wish it.
The same sort of ideologues are the ones responsible for unreliable wind and solar power. No knowledge of the facts of electricity and meteorology.
Its all about thermodynamics , maff be hard in Clown World.
Lol, Maff and Fermodynamiks is racist too don’t forget. You’re full of privilege if you understand these subjects and know how to engineer and problem solve.
Then again, engineering and applied science plus the skill and ability to build and fix things is also racist. The government and educational system said so.
https://electricautonomy.ca/2023/02/06/ottawa-electric-transit-buses/#:~:text=This%20month%20Ottawa%20City%20Council%20approved%20the%20%24974,around%20the%20pilot%20…%204%20Next%20steps%20
In Ottawa they say its super duper.
In Ottawa they say its super duper.
In Sodom on Rideau, they also vote for Blackie…
” It’s been challenging for us”
Translation: we need a much larger $$$$$ budget. We need to throw even MORE money at this …
Oh and …
… and the electrical infrastructure, which was originally estimated to be only about $50,000, give or take, for those four buses ended up being more like $200,000.”
“Electric infrastructure”? What the hell is he talking about? Ohhhhh yeahhh … the $$$ COST to actually charge these busses is 4x as much as promised. Now compare the miles actually traveled … actually carrying children … to the cost of diesel?
No, he means that the amount of power they need to charge the buses means they need their own mini-substation. Equivalent to what you’d use to power an entire school with 1500 students and a pool. Maybe more, for all I know.
People think you plug these things into a wall socket and they charge like your phone. In fact they draw so much power it is hard to believe. You’d be lucky to get that kind of capacity installed for $200K, unless you have a trunk power line running past the end of the driveway.
In my recent home remodel, I included a separate dedicated 50 amp circuit and breaker for a future EV charger outlet. The 6/4 copper wire cost me nearly $1,000.00 for a relatively short run from new 400amp service panel. Since I was upgrading anyway … I won’t include the cost of my new solar-ready meter and main panel. The 50 amp breaker was about $150.00. Mind you, there were PEAK pandemic prices and I had to wait 8 weeks for Eaton service panel.
No, I will never install solar, or plug in an EV. That was all done for a future eco-woke buyer. I expect I can soak them for as much “infrastructure” as this School District got soaked.
Quite right. The municipal distribution system alone is insufficient to allow anything more than about 5% market penetration of EVs replacing ICEs. Since in the past three decades there’s been a steady overall decline in redundancy within all distribution systems in North America, mostly because of household load growth, this will only get worse. This means less room for EVs, not more. Unless of course, Justatwit wants to put an end to Canada’s 350,000/year population growth because of immigration.
“We’ve been learning a lot about this technology,”
Too funny. No you haven’t. You’re an ideologue…you follow the script. You’d rather shoot yourself in the face than to admit it’s all B.S.
When Environmental Sustainability Director is on your Linkdlen…we know who butters your bread in the morning.
Try looking beyond the simple facts learned in this story and apply the same facts to highway delivery trucks that are expected to put in a full days work, every day, week in week out.
We haven’t heard much about those huge EV fleets being ordered by the house delivery companies.
Any organization that has a “environmental sustainability director” is bound to learn some very hard lessons in budgetary math. There are approx 17,500 students in the Ann Arbor Public School system. The longest school buses carry 81 students so an all EV fleet would require at least 212 more EV buses. At $50K for infrastructure and a purchase premium of $400K for each bus compared to a diesel it would cost $95M to replace the fleet with EVs as compared to diesels. The diesels will have a longer service life and a higher resale value as well.
delusions Of Adequacy abound..
Next,”Those buses were faulty”..
Blame the manufacturer.
Next time consult the ever ready bunny first!!!!!
Play stupid games win stupid prizes. Have fun going broke.
Environmental sustainability director?.. The local commissar :).. Expert on all things she knows nothing about except the things you are not allowed to do.. That unfortunately is measurable and because of that she will focus entirely on that..
So.. We define the scope and outcome of the problem and the scope and outcome of the solutions.. Normally such a thing would put you in jail for fraud but put a few letters behind your name and its all good.. PHD in sustainability?.. One hell of a gig if you can get it..
They tried the bottom up communist revolution but the workers were not falling for it.. Now they are doing the top down communist revolution because none of the bad stuff applies to the upper class.. In spite of getting no air, we are still not falling for it..