EEVblog 1441 - Electric Buses are NOT a SCAM (Adam Something)

Repsonding to Adam Something's video claiming that electric buses are a scam. Lets analyse his claims and look at what's really happening with the cost benefit anlysis of electric buses vs diesel and electric trolley buses.

00:00 - Electric buses are a scam
01:20 - The claims
01:50 - Growth of electric buses in China
02:40 - Why not just put up wires in cities?
03:45 - Visual polution
05:50 - But they catch on FIRE!
06:38 - Batteries use slave labour!
07:20 - Cost of Electric buses vs Diesel
14:00 - Autonymous trolly buses
18:28 - Everything BUT fully electric buses are viable! Anlysis of trolley buses.
21:29 - Dave's practical table of Pros and Cons comparing the 4 options
27:28 - Electric buses are DUMB! Yeah, nah.

References:

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#ElectronicsCreators #ElectricBus #AdamSomething

[AdamSomething]

Hey, thanks for the response!
I do admit my video about electric buses was somewhat hastily made, so I'll be putting out a video in the near future where I go deeper into the subject, and review the criticism together with the pro and contra positions!

[nodrogj]

"If you're going to use this argument (battery cost, slave labour) for electric buses, you have to do the same with electric cars"
Yes, and he does. A lot. He's famously against cars of any type, that's kinda his whole thing.

[ahtheh]

"Good luck trying to justify electric cars"
As far as I know Adam is trying to remove cars from urban areas (remote areas are exceptions)

[hollr]

Dave, maybe this is a cultural problem. Some people have a different understanding of public transport.

I live in a city with trolley buses. They run from 4:40 to 0:30 every 15 minutes, or 7.5 minutes between 6 and 20. Those busses never wait at any place for more than 5 minutes. If at all. The busses are 25m long and seat 220.
If you want to make them electric you would need insanely large batteries to run them even for 14 hours.
And yes, maintaining the overhead lines costs, but all 65 trolley busses share them.

I agree that for smaller busses with long wait times at a station batteries make sense. But you just can't replace trolley busses with battery busses. It just won't work.

[IvanBaturaChannel]

Sure, wires might add some visual pollution to the street, but I think that's pretty negligible compared to extra pollution that'll come from EV production.

[seanbutterfield]

Trolley buses with catenary ARE electric buses, first off, and they are way better for high capacity lines. Battery buses are fine for lower capacity lines where the infrastructure investment isn't worth it yet to run catenary, but electrified transit lines are the best and most reliable transit solution. Integrating trolley buses with short range batteries to handle rerouting is ideal.

[FunBotan]

This really depends on your city and priorities. Take Moscow, for instance. It inherited an expansive tram and trolleybus infrastructure from the USSR, but the current government is ripping it out and replacing them with electric buses for no good reason. In this case, electric buses absolutely are a scam. If, however, your only choice is between diesel and electric, then of course going electric makes the most sense in the overwhelming majority of cases, and I'm sure Adam agrees with that.

[drprofesszor]

I live in Budapest and i love the Trolley buses.
We have a lot of trolly line and working well. 45% of trolley have a smal battery pack for bypass the infrastructure issue (8km).

[RRW]

Electric Cars aren't the future. They are the future of Cars but we should work towards a future with less cars in general, focusing more on pedestrians, trains, or bikes (Electric or not). I think one of Adam's points about trolleybusses vs. battery busses was that the former not needing a large battery and having access to essentially unlimited power makes it easier to make larger busses.

[BlackAmV]

20:07 Dave, this is the comparison table for 5 units only and the lifetime for approximately 5 years of usage. For the system with several hundreds vehicles, already built trolleybus infrastructure, the trolleybus cost will be cheaper cause we don't need to buy and cary many tons of batteries every (approx.) 5 years and carry them on every vehicle instead of additional passengers. What was done f. e. in Moscow, where the huge trolleybus infrastructure was destroyed just to build electric buses system from the zero is insane.

[DEADBF]

I've always thought that a cross between trolley buses and electric buses seem to make the most sense.
You'd install overhead catenary wires along main trunk routes and in bus depots, then buses use battery power whenever they're not on these main routes or stopped in a main depot.

Using a combination of batteries and catenaries means buses can charge on the go, but the complex eyesore catenary junctions where multiple routes converge aren't necessary. Rural routes won't need electrifying as the buses servicing those routes can recharge once they reach electrified main roads and urban areas which are served by catenaries.

Hybrid trolley buses could also be fitted with much smaller batteries, making them cheaper and the lower axle weight means less wear on the roads, tyre would also need replacing less often.

You'd potentially also need less buses as they can run 24/7 with no need to ever stop to charge (this wouldn't apply to smaller cities which don't run public transport day & night). They'd only need to stop for periodic maintenance.

---

Once sufficient routes have catenaries installed their use could also be leased to hauliers and HGVs hauling goods along these main routes. So that would be a potential income source for local authorities (but would need a critical mass of cities and main roads to be fitted before it becomes viable).

[PRiMETECHAU]

Adam's solution was ultimately in the end a overhead wire system throughout the city if I remember correctly. In saying that I do agree we need to get off Cobalt and Lithium usage when it comes to electric/battery buses.

[Kamtar]

The trolley buses with small batteries in them are great. They can pulldown the trolleys and pull it up automatically in a few seconds and as they do it usually when they stand at a stop you never notice it.

[toptiergaming]

You do realize that saying a 30kw battery is equal to a 500kw battery is like saying a hand grenade is just as deadly as a Nuke

[_SimOke_]

I live in Lublin, which is one of three cities in Poland that have trolleybus network and there are no plans to change that to at least 2030. Even better, there are plans to expand further!

I'm concerned with using battery electrics instead of trolleybuses mainly because of corridor lines. Electric buses you've shown are definitely too small for those, since even 18m buses or trolleybuses are barely enough, even when lots of lines overlap. Let's say that you buy 18m battery buses and run them on corridors. Lots of passengers will eat up your battery while need of high frequency will force you to reduce charging times. Trolleybuses aren't limited by batteries so they can run as long as they are needed.
Visual pollution is a weird argument. When wires run over the streets they are hardly noticeable, especially when mounts are integrated into things like streetlights. It's the intersections where it gets ugly, but does that mean that we should get rid of traffic lights and streetlamps too?

Also, reconnecting to the grid adds little to no delay. Trolleypoles are either guided by roof shaped guides on wires or by hand with ropes.

[myblack]

as I'm working for a swiss public transport company, I can say that we are moving from trolley and diesel buses step by step to electric and hybrid buses. The maintenance costs of all wires are hughes and can be very complex especially on crossroards in the midle of the city. Diesel buses are no more an option due to gas and noise polution, regulations and fuel consumptions. Diesel verhicles are very inefficient on stop and goes lines.

[ddpxl]

Electric busses in Amsterdam are amazing. The cut down on noise pollution alone makes it worth it. It really makes the center more liveable for everyone.

[anonym]

In Cologne, Germany they started a trial with 8 electric buses that use cantenary arms to fast charge (500kw) at certain bus stops in 2016 and it seems to have worked great for them, as they just ordered 53 more of them in the Summer with plans to have a total of 113 by 2022 (replacing ~40% of the fleet).

[Winnetou]

I like this and the discussion, though I'm more on Adam's side here.
I have to dispute the document of "Maintenance of electric buses" shown at 19:00 . I checked the link in the description and I see no data on how they got to those costs, and no sources listed.

The biggest issue I have with that table where it shows the huge trolley annual infrastructure cost and unexpectedly high vehicle maintenance cost (why is it 3 times the cost of the electric bus ? It doesn't make any sense) is it doesn't show the fleet size. If you're going to use A SINGLE trolley bus, then, yeah, the infrastructure costs are insanely huge. But if you have a fleet of 200 or 500 or 1000, well, then it's a whole different story. I really don't believe that the infrastructure cost is a downside of they trolleys. They should be put in known populated or important areas where there will always, regardless of route changes, will always be a lot of traffic needed, so the infrastructure is always used by a lot of trolleys.

I'm too lazy to do the research myself, but I hope more data that shows the infrastructure maintenance costs per km will surface, and a better comparison can be made. Also, let's not pretend that electric buses have 0 infrastructure investment and maintenance cost. Their charging is a serious investment as well, since they require huge amounts of electricity, and the city will need a lot of charging stations for all the buses, and maybe even planning for whom to recharge when, since most likely they won't be able to all recharge at the sime time.

The only downsides I see for the trolleys are the initial infrastructure investment (which also takes time, so you can't do it in a whole city at once) - but this is a one-time payment, after all. And the other downside is the "visual pollution". Personally I barely care about that, but I understand that others will, especially if it's in a place where there's a nice sight in range and the lines could "taint" a very nice photo.

Oh, and I'm really curious about the vehicle maintenance cost. I don't buy it that it's 3 times the one of an electric bus. It should be the same. Hopefully we'll get more info on that as well, so it can be properly settled.

The advantages I see for trolleys are that they should be a) more efficient - less Kgs to carry around, b) less polluting, since they have between 0 and 15% of the battery of an electric bus (remember, batteries, at least currently, are polluting too), with the same 0 pollution from running and c) cheaper in the long run, again, because of the battery and the cooling for it (less upfront cost for the vehicle, less cost in replacing the battery) - here it might not matter if the infrastructure cost is bigger.

Oh, and random thought (not counting it though): in the context of solar power, trolleys would consume it mostly during daytime, so less city-wide battery infrastructure would be needed (not counting it because, as of now, and maybe for ever, cities don't rely that much on solar power, so it might not matter at all when the energy is consumed, as long as all the solar power is consumed during the day)

[RusZugunder]

6:16 true, but the trolley buses have much smaller batteries without additional fuel. They carry very little energy with them compared to gas/full battery electric buses.