The Wheels on These Buses Go Round and Round With Zero Emissions

I'm assuming that those bus batteries are charged using zero-carbon magic, not conventional power generation (fossil fuels, nuclear, etc.) Con-Ed reports that only 8% of its earnings come from "clean" energy. So...

I pity the poor driver, riders too, who must listen to that "four-tone melody" the entire drive.

many people dont know that electricity comes from fossil fuel. title of article is misleading. electric from fossil fuel isnt the solution. the solution to global warming the use of hydrogen peroxide. i dont understand why hydrogen peroxide is essentially unknown to the general public. hydrogen peroxide powers cars boats planes and trains since the steam engine. if u went to the airport until 1957 there was a good chance the commercial airliner u boarded was powered by hydrogen peroxide. hydrogen peroxide is in wide use today for race cars known as rocket cars. solar wind waves biofuel is baloney--not enuf power. hydrogen peroxide also powered and still powers rockets to outerspace. unfortunately in recent years scientists discovered another rocket fuel thats about twice as powerful as hydrogen peroxide but is very toxic. two 'waste products' of hydrogen peroxide are pure oxygen and pure water. cost to make hydrogen peroxide is essentially zero. material used to make hydrogen peroxide can be used essentially forever. cost of use of hydrogen peroxide is basically the shipping which will come down if hydrogen peroxide is widely used.

pss--hydrogen peroxide also uses fossil fuels but its one tenth or less than anything else on the planet. objection to hydrogen peroxide as fuel is its too dangerous. thats baloney. in any event we dont have a choice. if we continue to use fuels that have high carbon emissions we will soon join the other species who we've made extinct with our high use of fossil fuel.

May I remind everyone electricity is generated by massive power plants using fossil fuels. The more electricity required, the more fossil fuel is polluting the environment. The answer is not in the usage of electricity, rather it is making the generation of electricity more efficient and environmentally friendly.

ps--cost of hydrogen peroxide--existing technology is about one tenth the cost of carbon fuel.

Low-mileage vehicles are likely a terrible use of such funds. 200 miles a week rounds down to about zero. Because of the enormous up-front costs and trivial mileage, it may never make sense to use electric school buses - certainly not when they are not running on nuclear or other clean energy. These are the kinds of investments that crush public support for sensible environmental policies, investments and changes to consumer behavior.

The extent of the reduction in children's exposure to air pollution by switching to electric buses was understated in this article. Due to their leakier construction (no AC) and boxy shape, school buses are much more vulnerable to their own exhaust entering the cabin than other vehicles. For older diesel school buses, the exposures were often dangerously high. This was first documented in 2001 by the NRDC (see https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/schoolbus.pdf ) and was later quantified thoroughly by many researchers, such as by the California Air Resources Board (see https://www.arb.ca.gov/research/schoolbus/schoolbus.htm ).

Buses now so silent creep that they won't disturb your sleep. Run on electricity they will keep things carbon free. But the kids who on them ride are noisier than a landslide.

Come on no added emissions is to deny that the electric utilities are all wind and solar. Now generation of the power was from Niagara Falls that holds some credibility. We must decide to take money out of the classrooms for this use.

So call us a "critic" if critic means the facts about cost effective emissions reductions for the most people. The greatest benefit to the most people for reducing emissions from older buses is from investing in the newest generation of diesel technology - especially if using VW funds to mitigate NOx emissions. Why? new generation diesels are near zero; school buses operate low annual miles, low load = a tiny blip on the emissions inventory. Funds should be spent to get more kids on newer buses rather than a privileged few on the few electric buses that limited money can buy. Meanwhile a 40 year old locomotive that runs 365 days a year around urban freight yards with many, many times the emissions of the entire bus fleet in the same community stays in service...because the limited funds go to a few shiny new school buses. Is this the best clean air lesson?

New York City has had hybrid electric/nat gas public busses for years. If they were not efficient they would not have been used. Yes, there were 'subsidies' and other ways to make this program happen. So what? Does anyone think the existing gasoline industry has not been subsidized for decades by various means up to and including war ? And when we gauge the 'cost' of different technologies, do we include the cost to future generations of pollution? Lung disease from asthma to cancer costs us huge amounts. Can it be calculated? We need to include that information when we talk about 'cost'.

Fabulous synthesis. The NYT continues to set the standard for comprehensive, thoughtful, understandable coverage of the fast-moving electricity landscape. Bravo, Brad Plummer!

While I applaud this and other efforts to increase the use of electrically powered vehicles, especially in urban settings with lot's of stop-and-go traffic, the zero emissions claim made in the headline is sadly untrue. We here in New York State (including New York City) still get A lot of our electricity from coal-fired power stations, so those zero emissions aren't really zero. A couple of years ago, New York was well on its way to heavily move on to wind and solar energy. I don't think I am the only one who's appreciate a follow-up on the state of affairs of that by the Times. Trump's irrational love for coal doesn't mean we have to give up on renewable energy here. I still rather buy my electricity from Wind farms upstate or off-shore then from CO2 and mercury-spewing coal-fired power plants.

Wethink: To really benefit from electric school buses, the charging source should be as close to carbon zero as possible. Photovoltaic, wind, wave, and geothermal power is great. We generate our electricity by capturing, collecting, and burning the methane emitted from our animal manure ponds and our own septic system in the engines that run the generators. Too, Wewe and Basha generate the electricity to power our our data center by pedalling two person-powered generators which are connected to highly regulated frequency and voltage inverters. We also capture wind power and wave power in our lake. We have as close to zero pollution electricity generation as possible!

Wow! So $200,000 extra for each bus goes toward paying for experimental technology instead of paying for teachers, or paying for school supplies, or labs, or classrooms. They're certainly "burning" a lot of money there.

In the chain of commerce between auto manufacturers and customers, the auto dealerships make good money repairing the cars they sell. Electric cars have fewer mechanical elements and fewer parts that break down and require warranty servicing. This was featured in a NyTimes article a while back. The people selling the cars have a disincentive to push their electric vehicle sales, and the salespeople drag their heels. It appears that the private market isn't the fastest way to introduce electric vehicles right now, and that municipal contracts with the manufacturers will really help develop the industry.

The myth of zero emissions rears its head again. Where do you think the electricity to run these buses comes from? Mostly from natural gas and coal...fossil fuels, just FYI. Talking to the electric vehicle acolytes you'd think the power comes from the little electricity fairies inside the wall. Then there are the batteries themselves. Huge amounts of power and mining resources are needed for those. But hey, who cares if giant areas of China are uninhabitable and people are being eaten up with cancer as long as we can get our Teslas. I mean, unless the environment in the U.S. isn't ruined, we can live with that, right? If I had more time I would tell you about all the fossil fuel-based materials used to make the bus (tires, plastic, rubber parts, engine components.

There are electric buses in use in downtown Chicago for moving people from the train station to some office buildings and it's a very welcome change from walking past idling diesel engines. "Report recommends ways for cities, schools to finance electric buses" https://www.utilitydive.com/news/report-recommends-ways-for-cities-schools-to-finance-electric-buses/541085/ I don't know if electrification right away would work for all schools, if they have older buses and want to reduce the pollution on a limited budget, perhaps going with propane would make sense in that case, but they should look at different options - the deal with ComEd to use the buses as load balance on the grid is an interesting approach (and will become more and more common as transportation electrifies) Parked cars and buses with batteries are going to become an important part of how the grid will work - soaking up midday solar and nighttime wind, and releasing power to the grid during peaks. Utilities are also planning virtual grids with batteries that are no longer useful for cars, but still have planty of capacity left for grid use. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/electric-vehicles-the-swiss-army-knife-of-the-grid/530709/

Oh, to have had electric buses when I was a kid riding them! The diesel fumes always made me sick and gave me a headache--just want you want at the end of a long day at school. I never got used to the smell. Good for you, generation now!

Instead of charging fines to Volkswagen for their Diesel engine fraud, we should require the company to replace our diesel school busses with electric. Same money; much farther reaching results. Better penance for a corporation.

In Holland teachers, parents and kids bike to school.

Where’s Tesla when we really need them?

Good article, but where is discussion of health benefits to the children riding the buses?

As a child, I frequently became nauseated, smelling the bus exhaust fumes especially when relegated to the back of the bus. It would have been so nice not to have arrived at elementary school after having vomited.

Mr. Plummer should ask the manufacturers of the buses how much they estimate they would cost if the company were to receive an order of 100,000 buses per year for the next ten to twenty years. See the comment by Anon. When you build very few of anything the cost is high. Estimates made by experts regarding electric vehicle costs are that once a certain quantity of production is reached they will be less expensive than internal combustion engine cars. This is perfectly reasonable given the fewer parts in an electric car and the lower cost of making an electric drive system vs. the very complicated and convoluted internal combustion engine. This lower cost is the real problem that corporations have with electric vehicles. They make more money on high priced vehicles. It seems to me that a consortium of cities who commit to purchasing large numbers of electric vehicles could easily drive down the cost by allowing manufacturers to scale to the production quantities needed to not only compete with ICE vehicles, but lower cost below ICE vehicle costs. But then, that would require a collective intelligence that humans appear to lack.

Those buses I loudly applaud By their thoughtfulness I am awed The Earth will be grateful Though D. Trump is hateful, And his nether lip will be gnawed.

Someone here made a lot of valid points, talking about upfront costs vs ongoing costs, opportunities for power price arbitrages, expectations of future lower prices, technical constraints, explaining how figures can dictate one way or the other. It is indeed a complicated matter, with the potential to make technological or engineering breakthroughs, but also to waste a lot of money: what if instead of spending all that money on these new buses we spent it on new solar panels? Or on city buses? Or dump trucks? Figuring that out is certainly not the job of school districts. Having a lot of departments start their own costly initiatives is how you just dust your resources with no coherent environmental policy, and no tangible results (a couple of buses running on electric are just a drop in the ocean if you don’t end up making technological breakthroughs). Each one of these buses is an expense towards the goal of creating a bus that would actually be economically efficient. It is most probably better to just build one or two prototypes, test them, figure out how to build them more cheaply, and actually start deploying them when you have something that works. Instead of spending literally millions to create an artificial market. Obviously sellers of electric buses (or solar panels, for that matter) think otherwise…

As with other capital efficiency improvements, the business case is a trade-off between capital expense (capex -- initial cost of vehicles and support infrastructure) and operating expense (opex -- cost of powering and maintenance over time). On the capex side, logarithmic cost declines with number of units shipped is a basic principle of engineering economics. There is no question that cost of electric fleets will come down. The question is how quickly and how to sell the initial, high cost units. The opex side is interesting. In general, PEVs cost less per mile driven to operate than diesel. There are some sweeteners. Among many: ConEd's use of the batteries during the summer is clever, assuming it works. Municipal and cooperative (as opposed to investor-owned) electric utilities purchase power at wholesale rates, with which they can also operate fleets. Off-peak charging can also help with cost, especially where nuclear plants have to dump excess power. It is also easier to control charging times at a bus depot than in individual homes. Photovoltaics produce at peak during school hours. If there is ever a carbon tax, it will increase cost of diesel. Electric vehicles are simpler mechanically, and should require less maintenance than diesel. Environmental benefits aside, electrification of school busses and other municipal fleets save (or will soon) taxpayer money. It shouldn't be difficult to produce a business case analysis to show that.

Tesla, where are you? What a great way to create future customers. This should be an easy one Elon. Short routes, predictable charging places and times.

There my be some merit in having electric buses, but "zero emissions" is a false concept. The emissions are just outsourced to the sites of power generation and other activities needed to support electric vehicles.

Weappreciate: The brave school districts that are concerned about the exposure of our children to diesel exhaust. A good first step is to go propane if the cost electric buses is prohibitive. But the best is to go all electric. In 1970, Peos and I worked alongside an air-quality engineer from Japan who told us that diesel fumes are very dangerous because of the particulates that are emitted, breathed in, and get lodged in our lungs. He told us that children, especially, were at danger because of their long-term exposure (riding on the school buses and exposure to idling buses at school) and the many years of life ahead during which the diesel particulates are causing damage to their lungs. Could be that lung cancer (and other illnesses) in non-smokers was/is caused by diesel particulates in their lungs breathed in, in the air, in and around diesel powered school buses