No more school buses?

miltruckman · 04-03-2021, 06:47 AM

I read that the new infrastructure plan Will require all school buses be electric.

This would mean that the entire fleet of current buses would have to be replaced.

Then there would be an incredible glut of diesel buses on the market for a period of time as the new buses were phased in. After that anything available would eventually be all electric.

I would suspect maintaining and servicing an all electric bus would be beyond most do-it-yourself peoples budgets and technical capabilities.

Eventually putting to an end the Skoolie.

Bill

cadillackid · 04-03-2021, 07:16 AM

there wont be any glut of sachool busses.. there will be a glut of scrap.. the far lefties trying to push the full electrification plan want all of the existing busses be destroyed per the EPA grant replacement guidelines.

this is something that is a good ways off as neither the electric busses nor the chargiong infracstructure is anywhere close to implemenation status..

me personally i would much prefer to have an electric bus over a diesel anyday if the infrastructure were there to support it.

as someone who likes toi spend a ton of time in my vehicles idling, electricity is the perfect thing.. 100kwh or more battery ready fopr use all the time.. chargeable by solar or by portable generator allows for many options.. and once sopmething like this gets implemented the ability to essentially charge up your traction and boondocking batteries quickly at a high power charging station would be really nice!

the one thing I loved about the chevy volt I had , and that was archaic tech compared to what is now and is coming, was the fact I could sit idle with heat or A/C running quietly.. more than once I left the car active, lock the doors and run into a store on a hot day .. to come back and find my car still nice N cool inside..

whether or not bus electrification is environmentally friendly or not is a discussion for the politicians to have but from a practicality standpoint I can see advantages to it.. even for campgrounders who run on shore power... and esp for those who do extended boondocking on solar.. those couple cloudy days dont kill off your batteries when you have a massive set under the bus.. keep a portable generator for emergencies if you have to charge up to drive someplace and replenish..

idea you can be boondocked and still be nice and quiet is a plus.. fuels will be available for quite a while yet before becoming obsolete giving the technology for heating and cooling with electricity(as well as battery tech) to catch up so you can still run your diesel heaters and portable generators for years to come

Deezl Smoke · 04-03-2021, 07:38 AM

I would'nt worry too much about it just yet.

But the electric buses of the future

, will easier to hack and work on than you might think. It's like computers and phones today, start your studies now and stay at least a little bit up to date on how they work so when the day comes you wont be over whelmed.

If I find the video again about the company working on a electric conversion kit for semi trucks, I will post it. Looks promising. I think you'll see conversion kits come online in tandem with any laws.

Deezl Smoke · 04-03-2021, 07:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cadillackid

whether or not bus electrification is environmentally friendly or not is a discussion

This discussion has been had. The results are up if you want to see them. As you are quite mechanically inclined, I think you would be most interested in reading up on it. Even using the current infrastructure as a model, charging station installation would save a lot of emission. Electricity, though produced in large part by fossil fuel at the moment, goes straight onto the grid from the places of production. Liquid fuel on the other hand, requires several transfers between the manufacturer and the end user filling station. Each transfer uses a lot of energy for delivery to the next distribution center etc. And then one can delve into the environment costs of using those liquid transfer mechanisms etc. But that's for another day.

Sehnsucht · 04-03-2021, 09:07 AM

If they simply mandate electric buses as the schools replace older buses with newer buses in the typical lifecycle I predict it will take about 15 years which is also the likely lead time necessary to install the charging infrastructure required to support the electric fleet and also to retrain or recruit electric powertrain qualified techs to maintain the fleet. However, environmentalism minded liberals have demonstrated that they're tired of waiting and then if they attempt to jumpstart the adoption they'll cause a number of issues including the one the OP mentioned. First, ramping up production of a million electric school buses is no easy task and given our current state of affairs will probably take 15 years by itself. Then there's the secondary market surge which will drop the bottom out of pricing but these will be the last diesels we can expect to ever see again. Now that's assuming they don't pull a Cali and demand the diesels be destroyed because, you know, the environment. The infrastructure might be the easiest part of the equation but it's still not going to happen fast. And I don't want to delve into the "which is less polluting" debate but the same argument I have for electric car mass adoption applies to mass bus adoption which is where is all that electricity going to be produced and how. Clean energy production solutions simply aren't as swift or scalable if you expect to be able to charge millions or tens of millions of electric vehicles every night when fossil fuel powered plants can be up and running in months.

T-Bolt · 04-03-2021, 10:55 AM

Great thread! Just read an article that Bluebird has 400 EV busses on the road now. Electric is superior to the internal combustion in every way we are just a few years early. I follow the EV market closely and the near future will be vastly different from what we are used to in a good way. I own an EV a diesel F250 and like I tell my friends, when range exceeds gas and charge time is as fast as a fill up everyone will want one.

cadillackid · 04-03-2021, 03:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by T-Bolt

Great thread! Just read an article that Bluebird has 400 EV busses on the road now. Electric is superior to the internal combustion in every way we are just a few years early. I follow the EV market closely and the near future will be vastly different from what we are used to in a good way. I own an EV a diesel F250 and like I tell my friends, when range exceeds gas and charge time is as fast as a fill up everyone will want one.

the vast majority of the public doesnt care what makes their car go.. its convenience. . you nailed it.. when EV's are the same cost and same convenience as gas cars the public will buy them. there will always be the early adopters who just like to play with the tech and have something cool / new, or think they are doing their part to hug a tree.. and the car enthusiasts who will bawk at it till the day they die..

when you get politics trying to rush the technology that is when you end up with half ass solutuons that take twice as long to fix vs letting tech drive the switch..

environmentally cradle to grave needs to be the discussion.. and that includes disposing of the vehicle at its end of life.. it also includes the generation of the power to run it and distribution.. renewables to charge the EVs is the ultimate goal but regulation is coming much quicker than technology and thats a scary place to be.. esp if you are someone like me who adopts what enhances life not detracts.. regulating away the gas heat in the homes and making power expensive so you will use less is a detractor not an enhancer... an enhancer would be funding development of more efficienct electric systems and funding development of better renewable generation systems and battery tech etc.. but governments seem only to know how top regulate which reduces standard of living... thats why they often see pushback from activist groups and corporations..

rolling blackouts happen in california because over-regulation has caused the system to be overloaded instead of funding their grid operators to update upgrade and invest in new clean tech..

BeNimble · 04-03-2021, 04:46 PM

Sure, no more school buses when kids just attend school at home via the internet.

Otherwise, EV school buses will be retired eventually, and so the Skoolie of the future would be worn-out EVs and we will discuss here not why your diesel engine won't start, but which worn-out batteries you should replace and how to increase range and power to go up hills..

There are business which covert to EVs. As we learned, my own school district has a fleet of EV school buses. Never noticed them, but I have noticed we have a lot of "shorties" that everyone seems to want still using Diesel.

o1marc · 04-03-2021, 06:00 PM

Reminds me of "how much would you pay for something you don't want?

Mercuric Mind · 04-15-2021, 08:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deezl Smoke

I would'nt worry too much about it just yet.

But the electric buses of the future

, will easier to hack and work on than you might think. It's like computers and phones today, start your studies now and stay at least a little bit up to date on how they work so when the day comes you wont be over whelmed.

If I find the video again about the company working on a electric conversion kit for semi trucks, I will post it. Looks promising. I think you'll see conversion kits come online in tandem with any laws.

I Think Meritor is planning on putting out an electric traction system for medium-heavy trucks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyGe...hannel=Meritor

Knight163 · 04-15-2021, 10:15 AM

Just so you know I've been in an automotive industrial for the past 25 years and what have you learned even with a clunker program that happened 10 years ago they will scrap the buses but they will take the pots that are valuable and we most need and have them for sale so no worries as long as you know how to work on your bus you'll be okay

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