Electric Buses Are A Scam*
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 พ.ย. 2021
- *when they're used as a shiny green PR stunt instead of building an actually viable system, which, in the majority of cases, doesn't include battery-electric buses.
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I just have to point out something, because I see this a lot in these discussions. When you mention slave labour in mining the rare earth metals, this is not an flaw in the use of batteries in vehicles. It's a problem, but it's not inherent to the batteries. It's possible to make batteries without slave labour. Consider this: if lots of clothes are made from slave or exploitative labour (which they are), you don't stop wearing clothes. You work to eliminate those bad agents from the clothes industry.
I say this not to stop the discussion of slave labour - it should be discussed - but the framing of it in this instance is a poor form of argument.
Exactly. I haven’t seen this clown doing any videos about how mobile phones are a scam because they have batteries in them…
Especially considering that the alternative - diesel buses - also uses cobalt. Because most of the cobalt mined worldwide is used as a catalyst for desulphurization in oil refining.
And batterymakers have a brand to defend and thus a strong incentive to set up ethically verified supply chains, while Exxons oil refineries do not. Leading to the situation where Exxon are the ones actually propping up the slave cobalt, while also accusing batterymakers of this.
Seconded
especially considering that there are no rare earth metals in batteries
@@Timformers yes! ‘rare earth elements’ aren’t actually rare! 🤣
My 2 cents: I get your point, but as a pedestrian who occasionally had to walk along a roads with a lot of (admittedly older) diesel buses, my nose and lungs would very much have appreciated them being electric instead (this was in Manchester, UK)
Luckily we are moving away from diesel busses in the UK, we have many on our streets all over the Westcountry but I really wish it would move faster.
What about naturals gas buses? My city runs all its buses on CNG. Less polluting than diesel and more less expensive than electric.
@@lakshyamongia3270 Sounds like it would significantly improve city air quality
He suggested trolley busses should be used instead of battery busses. Both are electric, one just is more ecological to produce.
My bike route has a part that goes alongside a bus route. That’s how I figured out they’re loud as heck. Now I know why our city has no diesel buses in these areas; smelly, loud, unpleasant. That makes people drive more.
I have to disagree with you on this one Adam, here in the Netherlands Electric busses work perfectly, they replaced all the old and dirty diesel busses some time ago and made the cities cleaner and less noisy, I do however agree that it is not the most economical option for developing countries.
If you'd spend more city budget to transportation you'd probably can hire migrants to carry the citizens with their bare hands. Very quiet and pollution free.
@@Getoverhere666 that would be too slow. Also human cost is higher then a car. :) so ar that point just buy a car
@@mauricebenink agree. So cars are ok.
@@Getoverhere666 no i am comparing your idea to cars. Busses are much more efficient and electric busses are situational.
Also wont discuss with you futher since you are a troll or incredibly incompetent.
Nah there is still much diesel buses here you must live in the hague or rotterdam
I’m convinced at this point that Adam is the “I like trains” guy
Duh, he hates cars
Cars are fun hes just jealous he doesn't have a Mustang
@@hobosorcerer no it sucks bro here its so hot you dont wanna walk or take a bike or be in some smelly packed bus or train with a lot of sweaty ppl
Nothing beats being in the comfort of your own little empire
@@derkommissar4986 the empire of being in a traffic jam, huh?
@@KD10Conqueror have fun getting mugged
@@KD10Conqueror did you forget that all vehicles besides bicycles can be stuck in a traffic jam as well?
The problem with this one is, the situation where the city has a dilemma whether to buy 1000 diesel busses or 500 electric busses, doesn not actually ever happen. The number of busses will stay the same, because the bus routes are already established. The only cost is replacing old machines, for new ones, which would happen eventually anyway, as the old diesel machines would be scrapped for newer ones. So when they are replaced with electric, the only result is cheaper and cleaner transport.
I don't know much about trolleybuses, as we don't have them here, but I can agree that they would be the best option, provided we can accept the cost of intrastructure.
Exactly and which developing city would even have the budget to buy like 500+ buses in one go?
@@deepthavasanth4492 Tf do you live in a third world country or what?
I agree. Also, if we're comparing the cost of initial setup, how are trolley buses not _the_ most expensive option? You have to set up the network of wires, and purchase buses that have the wire pole on top of having an engine for short off-route stints. He never discussed the cost of that...
I mean, trolley buses obviously work, my city and the last one I lived in both had trolley buses for the busiest downtown routes. (The more peripheral routes didn't use the wires.) I'm just saying his arguments seemed kinda off...
That's not really true tbh, you can always increase capacity on a line or add new lines, hence the demand for more buses. And it's exactly how you get people out of cars and on buses - by having a more frequent service that goes to more places.
@@architakumar2579 he and you like me most likely live in the same country.
Sorry to inform you but other than regions with hyper urbanism like ncr and mumbai (or other big cities like banglore , pune, chennai) India is considered a third world country.
"City bus lines have this attribute of not changing their route." Not true. A lot of cities are constantly changing their routes to deal with changes in neighborhoods and job centers. Smaller cities add, reroute, and unfortunately remove bus lines every few years. Sure, after a while, a city will ultimately settle on some major unchanged routes, but there will always be the need to add or change some routes. Having a transit mode with that flexibility is very important.
Just because a city can change the bus routes doesn't mean it reroutes the entire network.
@@KRYMauL it does happen a lot
@@gameplaysuffering1620 what is a lot, I live in Berlin and their maybe change some route slightly ones per year.
Yes, I hate this, when I was at high school in Prague, I was using bus 205 which even doesn't exist now, for traveling to my grandma's, I was using tram 24 which has different route now, it's pretty messy now. Some lines were same for like 50 years and now in last 10 years, they changed everything. My father was tram driver in Prague in 90s and he is always confused when he visits Prague, he is always saying that he is glad he doesn't do it anymore.
If every major street has an overhead wire it won’t matter, because every route imaginable would be covered.
Not only did you use a “slippery slope” when comparing electric buses with diesel ones, but you assumed that the city would be buying all of the buses from scratch. If this is the case, then your point somewhat stands, but the reality is that electric buses will just be swapped out with the preexisting diesel ones.
Also the part when he said that they are cheaper to operate but more expensive to buy, so the city will buy less of them than diesels, which will lead to [problems]" is assuming that cities buy stuff with cold hard cash.
Reality is things like that are bought with loans, for which banks analyze total costs of investment and stuff.
If electric busses are cheaper to run, then city government will probably be able to get a bigger loan, to buy the same amount of them as diesels, because bank knows that the city will be able to pay off the loan faster as less money is pend on maintenance.
Literally what’s happening in my city rn.
one reason I like electric busses is that they're quite and doesn't produce much vibration. you can have a peaceful ride, unlike noisy&vibrating busses.
That would apply to trolleybuses too.
@@LyleGlenn Good luck installing enough overhead wire to compete with Buses. I'm from the city with the biggest Tram network in the world at 250km total. It's still tiny compared to the Bus network on the same streets.
We were only talking about noise and vibrations.
@@LyleGlenn trolleybuses can make a lot of noise. I don’t know what it is exactly, maybe some noise from energy transformers
Good diesels are quiet too
Couple of points:
- Bus routes do change routinely, due to big events, road constructions or changing transport dynamics in cities
- If your overhead wire breaks, you potentially lose your whole transport system until it's fixed in comparison to only losing a single bus
- If rare metals and slave labour are an argument, we couldn't use any systems using microchips
- If your overhead wire breaks, you potentially lose your whole transport system until it's fixed in comparison to only losing a single bus
this is very uncommon and would only affect a single line
@@SlimeJime yeah a single line is nothing.
@@SlimeJime "this is very uncommon and would only affect a single line " if only a single line goes down that specific road. However it's not uncommon to see several lines driving down on the very same road together as they merge at some point heading to larger bus stations and hubs.
In my old home town some normal bus stops (through-going bus traffic, no interchange hub) were served by more than 20 different bus lines. With a wire coming down on that section you'd interrupt a lot of city bus traffic on more than 20 lines ...
Microchips are usually only made of lithium or similar silicon and copper. There is no rare metal used...
And also the overhead wires are built within multiple circuits so that only one circuit would fail.
@@leonmoto1931 but phones use both microchips and rare earths, and no just one circuit failing never happens. Always several circuits fail at once.
It's nice to see Adam's audience is willing to disagree with him instead of accepting whatever takes he has as good ones
It shows how certain kind of content can bring people that are not easily persuasive and don't lack critical thinking. Adam was not right this time and that's fine but his audience passed this test with an A.
What's surprising is that this isn't Adam's first really bad take and it's amazing he's gotten so popular. His hyperbole and lack of research or context is something that runs through a lot of his videos. He seriously advocated for putting power lines over fixed bus routes instead of loading batteries onto buses. What in the actual fuck. That makes no sense whatsoever. And then there's the fact that buses remove cars from the road, improve traffic, reduce infrastructure spending and physical/mental health issues. He comes up with the most absurd premises that are keyed for TH-cam clickthrough and once in a while, his vapid criticisms will coalesce into something that makes sense when he clearly never embraces anything more than a superficial understanding of anything he covers. He builds strawmen and then tears them down poorly. I cannot believe people fall for his videos or give him this much attention.
@@xavier8366 Oh no, you found the edge case against aging, low capacity bus batteries, better toss them and all of their advantages over diesel right out the window like Adam did because he's doubling down so hard on a couple of easily solvable flaws!
That was also well established below his community post about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
@@NickRaven your rant will not age well
One thing I think worth pointing out is when you mentioned how inner city bus routes are hardly susceptible to change, therefore we might as well build more permanent infrastructure. However the whole charm of busses is that they are an ultimately variable resource that can be altered and fluid depending on the circumstances. Cities are inherently dynamic, whether they’ve reached peak urban expansion or not, new neighbourhoods will rise and fall out of favour, requiring dynamic investment to reflect that
I feel like these videos are true in the sense of "what is the most efficient method in general" but with the US, I feel like we can only manage improvements to existing systems, like from diesel to electric for example. In my town, we don't even have any bus lines to electrify.
then the obvious first improvement to be made is to reduce distances between homes and possible destinations
like allow and even subsidise starting small services and amenities, or even small scale offices (for example something that would provides space for about 20-30 workers) in previously purely residential areas (like suburbs)
couple that with a few buslines that only connect places inside that suburb and you will have massively reduced car traffic, since a lot of trips that previously led out of the burb now stays inside of it and are replaced with either foot, bike or bus transit
once that transition is made, that system can then more easily be expanded upon as needed, for example with electrified rail or subway from a central point in the suburb to other suburbs and the inner city areas
that kind of application also might be a reasonable option for battery busses, since the journeys stay relatively short distance in areas with low levels of infrastructure
My city replaced a majority of their diesel buses with electric buses over the last few years and I consider that a good change. They don't carry a very large battery but only enough to complete their 25 minute round trip with some power to spare. They have a scheduled wait at the end of the line anyways, so they're charged by overhead wires at the bus station while they wait, giving them enough power to run throughout the day.
Regardless of which type of electric bus is being used, all of them have significant advantages over diesel buses. They are much quieter and cleaner, improving quality of life for the people that live near those bus lines.
I mean, I understand the immediate impacts of producing a battery, but they're just so much quieter.
I think it's better overall if a city chooses 50 e-buses over 50 diesel buses, but if we were talking about the 50 Vs 100 scenario then I can see the case for not diesel, but CNG.
And for me, diesel shouldn't even be an option anymore considering CNG buses have existed for so many years, and it's considerably cleaner in terms of tailpipe emmissions compared to even the cleanest diesels.
Thats extremely inefficient! Buses should be driving for whole time in rush hours so typically 4h in morning and 4h in afternoon. Non-stop! Every electric bus is a major investment so you are effectively having a quasi eco-friendly bus with horrible efficiency. Battery life is the biggest drawback of electric vehicles.
@@MisFakapek buses DO that. That's why every route has MULTIPLE buses. When one leaves the charger, another enters.
@@Hjernespreng this still is inefficient, why not have both busses run the line to increase peak capacity,
or not have the extra bus as you could with a diesel that doesnt need to wait after the end of each line
@@rodi8266 You do realize that diesel busses also have scheduled wait periods for, i don`t know, bus drivers actually needing a break to eat something and stretch after a long time of sitting? Not to mention needing a bathroom break? Combining that time with recharging seems absolutely efficient to me.
Sorry, but as an engineer, I am not convinced by the information provided. This just seems like complaining at randomly guessed data.
Electric busses are certainly preferable to diesels busses when it comes to pollution and noise. But there are various ways of implementing them, each with their individual infrastructure, vehicle procurement and maintenance costs. For example, the charging infrastructure cost of battery powered buses might be lower than setting up and maintaining wires all over the city.
Therefore, various proposals are usually considered in cities. Since this technology is currently evolving, data needs to be gathered in real live applications to see which solution is preferable.
the capital outlay for battery infra vs trolley bus is about the same, trolley buses are superior in every metric. the 'data's been gathered, trolleybuses have been in use for literally a century.
Also an engineer, he also overestimates the risk of batteries buring, doesn't see climate change (why not diesel busses) and decreasing battery cost, and blames systemic problems (working conditions, politicians not doint long term investmens) on the technology.
My city has e buses and its much nicer than diesel (noise, pollution) :) but we also have trams so they could use the overhead lines, they still ordered new battery powered ones
@@ch98hb plus he forgot to mention "in north America" in the title
I agree, he oversimplifies a lot. E-Buses might not be the solution to everything but there definitely are cases where they make sense. For example many of the other options like trams, trolley buses and trains might be better, they cannot be implemented everywhere. And Diesel Buses are just simply problematic due to all kinds of pollution.
I just handed in my bachelor thesis on E-Buses in Berlin. Here we have two story buses, so when implementing power lines you would need seperate lanes for different bus heights. Instead Buses are charged at stations so the batterie size can be reduced.
Why do you feel the need to point out you’re an engineer?
Yeah, when you said that bus routes don't change often I laughed. I am subscribed to notifications about exactly two inner-city bus routes in my city and the number of times they have to temporarily change route due to roadworks is pretty high. It seems to be every other week.
I'm not a fan of overhead wiring, it's ugly visual pollution. When I used to live on a main road the diesel and gas buses would be ugly noise pollution over and above the noise of cars. Electric buses have a place in a public transport mix.
true
I was going to write my own comment but you've stated exactly the same issues as I found and probably explained them better than I would have.
Yeah lmao idk what city adam lives in but here in Auckland bus routes change virtually every other month due to road works and construction. Idek where to catch my old bus from anymore
I think he's talking about permanent changes. In my city anyway we have signs where the bus stops are so unless there's construction we know where it's at. There has only been one permanent change on the routes I usually go on but that said I do disagree that electric busses are bad. We have some and some kind of hydrogen one too but they only have one of those
Trolley buses ARE electric buses. As you said, modern trolley buses have an internal battery pack that allows it to function without the wires for a while. Some of the routes will have a big portion without wire and it'll be fine. So you can think the thing as a trolley with internal battery just in case, or as a electric bus with charging wires when it's convenient to extend range. For a big enough city I'd imagine they are constantly adding/removing over head wires and have trolley/electric buses with whole range of different sizes of battery to dynamically adjust.
I think trolleybuses with batteries are the perfect alternative.
@@leonardoalvarenga7572 it`s better to have just 1 plug at the end of the line bus fills up the batterie and runs of it no wires needed
@@nashorn9745 Except that battery buses aren't as potent as trolleybuses. For instance, battery buses struggle with uphill slopes, whereas trolleybuses and regular diesel buses have no issues with that.
@@leonardoalvarenga7572 not the ones here
@@leonardoalvarenga7572 Depends on the bus that is not a general problem. The disadvantage of trolley busses is that they need costly infrastructure. Battery only busses on the other hand need breaks for charging and the busses are more expensive. So which concept or even a mixture of both wins depends a lot on local circumstances.
In most situations I would expect battery only busses and tram lines win as a combination. You can take the tram lines for the high demand lines and the battery bus to close the gaps. The trolley bus only makes sense, if you need to run many high frequency bus lines without having time to charge in between.
Buses do actually change their routes quite frequently, cities are changing constantly and roads get cut off for construction all the time.
Depends where you live and on which routes, I think. Also, a city could do maintenance on those roads during trolleybus off-hours or at night, or have a small diesel/battery fleet to "sub in" on disrupted routes. You do have a point, but there are also other solutions to these issues
This is even more valid in developing countries, like India or Nigeria where population is growing at massive rates. Also, because of the crazy traffic, following the same route under a wire is next to impossible in these countries
@@eclogite I'm not sure that repaving a road through a residential area AT NIGHT is such a brilliant idea.
@@eclogite Not really. The solution is as you say, buses. We need buses. every single city needs buses. The question isn't "should we buy electric buses", the question is "should we buy electric buses or diesel buses" and the answer to that is pretty damn obvious: Electric (unless if you are in a developing country).
But if you have a "weaving" network of catenary, you can make the detours also on the network. In german cities i saw that a construction is no problem to the trams, because there are tracks on nearby roads as well. So same for trollies.
Also when there is a construction, the trolley service can be replaced with normal busses.
We had a funny announcement one day when they said, the trolley replacement buses will be replaced by trolleys due to technical reasons...
I disagree with this video. When a city is buying electric busses, it won't have suddenly half as much in the fleet. It will replace existing ones with new, leaving old diesel buses when they don't have enough money. Government, or in Europe EU, will most likely cover some of the cost of the transition. In small city near me they bought two electric busses which were the first in fleet. Creating infrastructure for trams would require many milions of euro more and would take years.
I think I would agree actually the likelihood that the batteries will go up in flames is so negligible in any city with decent traffic control.
Also if he wants you can absolutely have a few wires charging the batteries from above the busses tom Scott has a video that many subscribers of this channel made fun of about a system of wires above highways which do virtually the same thing as I would suggest for inner city bus routes
Indeed, my city has replaced all it's diesel busses with battery powered busses recently. They replaced the old busses because they had to be replaced anyway, They also chose for electric busses because they will be cheaper to run over their lifetime. The cost over the lifetime is much more important than the upfront cost for businesses and government. Even more so now governments can get basically free money (sometimes paying negative interest on government bonds).
Hey, Mteusz.
Unfortunately, it does not always work that way. At first electric busses also need infrastructure. For instance they need charging which has nothing similiar with charging of electric cars. The most general approach is to charge a bus on a terminal stop and it is not as much efficient as trolleys. At second electric buses can not be used in any climate. On winter bus not only have to be moved by some force but also warmed. So in Moscow for instance electric buses are as much dirty and noisy as usual busses.
At second, electric busses are just cool fancy projects which are actually not as much cool and comfortable as it is claimed to be. For instance Moscow trolley has been destroyed at all under the idea of creating electric bus infrastructure. And as there are not so much of them and they are not even little bit capable as trolleys a huge network has been replaced by diesel buses.
Yeah this video is one of the worst takes I've ever seen on this channel.
1. Talks about how electric buses should just use wired power because they stay on the same route all the time (nevermind the cost of installing and maintaining that electrical infrastructure and the uphill political battle of installing eyesores above every bus route?)
2. Emphasizes the environmental hazards of producing batteries while ignoring the hazards of producing and burning fossil fuels
3. Highlights the slave labour sometimes involved in mining minerals used in battery construction while ignoring the harmful social and geopolitical power dynamics surrounding nations that harvest fossil fuels
4. Adds that electric buses are bad because less wealthy countries can't afford them, assuming that costs will stay the same over the next decade as every single major automotive manufacturer is starting to transition towards an all-electric product line and missing the multiple paths of innovation in battery technology currently being fruitfully explored. Also, because some countries can't afford them, we shouldn't use them everywhere else and help reduce the global impact of greenhouse gases?
5. Makes a bunch of conjectures without evidence about the downstream effects of spending money on electric buses in less wealthy countries
@@cornoc not to mention, why he makes the distinction between electric buses and trolley buses. they both work on electric motors...
i think it's just for the clickbait title value
The ride comfort is just superior compared to traditional busses. Having electric lines on all streets would lead to a mass of service breaks, since practically every construction project would lead to a need to take down the lines temporarily every time something is built.
One thing I love about electric buses (over diesel) is how quiet they are. Well built trams can also be quiet and relaxing, but Sydney can’t make a good tram.
this comment section restores my faith in humanity. Mature people discussing their different ideas in a mature manner.
You have such nice viewers, Adam!
One way to make people to talk in a mature manner is to speak in a mature manner yourself which is exactly what Adam did.
Just go on Mi General Pinochet comment section. You will see Nazis and fascists openly being proud of killing minorities.
underrated comment! I really do enjoy the discussion under this video.
@@robbieaulia6462 the dilemma persists on the small scale too. When they need to replace a bus, they could buy a diesel bus at the same cost or an electric for the price of two diesels.
Fewer busses running the routes makes traffic and late arrivals more impactful，and combined with crowding caused by trying to squeeze the same number of ppl into fewer busses, can lead to backups. This is especially true at rush hour. Crowded and late busses push consumers towards cars, which are more costly.
I love that you can go to the comments for more information!
I'm sorry, but this time I am not convinced. Diesel buses are cheaper but they have massive drawbacks in terms of local air and noise pollution. Electrifying the 200+ km of bus routes in my small German city of 120k would simply not be feasible. A lot of the bus lines run through lower density residential neighbourhoods where you can't just string wires from housefront to housefront, so you'd need to put up poles virtually everywhere. This would be costly, in addition to being a frigging eyesore. I also suspect you somewhat underestimate the costs and difficulties of installing and maintaining hundreds of kilometers of overhead wire in an complex urban enviroment.
I'm not sure of the cost but i'd need to see numbers about the price difference between overhead wires and replacing buses with batteries.
in my hometown in south Italy we had the wire infrastructure post ww2 but it served only like 30% of the actual bus line system so in the 80’s they had to shut down all the wire line in favor of diesel as it would not be possibile to wire all the city for A) the cost of the infrastructure and B) bc of the narrow manouver space of the bus inside the old town
"Simply not feasible" is an evasion. As infrastructure goes, trolley wires are pretty cheap. If putting them up isn't feasible, then neither is any sort of significant infrastructure, in which case we may as well give up trying to stop the climate crisis and just go back to agrarian immiseration.
As other guy in the comments said, the best would be a hybrid. A small battery to power the bus when wires can't be used. That way you have a flexible vehicle that's always charging the battery so you can have maximum efficiency. Trolleybuses are not expensive. In my third world country they are pretty common, and the wires are not different than those in the power electric lines. All in poles. Only difference is that they use a diesel engine when they have to deviate
@@Cuttlefish2202
if you put up the wires you probably also have space to use rails, and then you could just go in all the way and use more efficient trams...
I have been watching your videos for a time now and i have to say that you can make similar arguments for nearly every technology like cell phones are much more likely to catch on fire due to having batteries why not use good telephone service across a city but the thing is if you need a better technology you need to try things out, they can always find a better way to suit batteries that are fire proof with a casing that has a fire extinguish capabilities or using some other kind of battery that could be safer for the long run such as nuclear batteries that could be made safer for public use, this logic is wrong in my opinion because in order to make a better technology you need to experiment and think outside the box, I am sorry if i miswrote words English is not my native language, thanks for the video.
One of the nice things about buses is you can easily pilot or adjust lines whenever to figure out which paths are the best.
Trains/trams are one and done. If you made a mistake with where you put the track or stations, it will take years to rectify the issue, assuming you ever get a chance to fix the issue.
How about once you figure out the most popular routes with buses, you replace those bus routes with trams? You'd greatly minimise the risk of laying tracks at the wrong place.
@@Milnoc if there is a car crash on a tram line on the street then the tram can't run until it is cleared. If it happened on the same route as a bus, the bus can go one street over and continue with little disruption
While I typically agree with your videos, I'm going to have to go against you for this one. I think your position underestimates the costs of implementing infrastructure to have a trolley or train system within a city. While it might make sense to implement that sort of system in a large city like Budapest, where fixed costs are less imperative, in smaller cities, the electric bus is a cost effective measure. "Throwing up some wires," as you mentioned it, would require a large amount of funding that simply isn't feasible in cities with a smaller budget. The electric bus is a means of providing better public transportation without having to make any expensive or large scale infrastructure changes; they can use the already existing road network. Not to mention that electric buses are more environmentally friendly and low maintenance than their diesel counterparts.
That green argument only holds true if the electricity is also green...otherwise you’re only moving the pollution from the exhaust pipe to the smokestack...and it takes a fraction of the time to recharge a diesel or gas bus vs. a battery...and you lose a ton of energy just in transmission.
I don’t think I’d 100% dismiss the use of e-buses, but I think the point that more buses = more routes with more frequency, and therefore in places like the US we would be way better off with more buses in most places than with quieter and less polluting buses because of how many cars could be taken off the road.
Cars are WAY worse...so just get us better bus service. And since transit is so awful in most of the US, it DOES make sense to electrify and go trolleybus along a lot of lines because it’s a no-brainer where the routes need to be for decades to come. Spending the money on wires seems a whole lot smarter than spending it on batteries that are dead weight, take the unit out of service for recharging, and WILL need to be replaced at a considerable expense down the line. I would actually be surprised if operating costs and capital costs were indeed lower for an e-bus vs. a diesel. I will admit 100% that I have not researched this...but that’s what my gut says.
@@LeeHawkinsPhoto moving pollution isn't a bad thing actually. because i'd much rather prefer to live in a big city without concentrated pollution to the point of smog, thank you very much. it is peanuts on a planetary scale, of course, but don't dismiss health benefits of good air.
@@swancrunch believe me, I certainly would prefer not breathing the exhaust myself either, but there are still a lot of power plants in the middle of populated areas...and we may need to actually burn more fossils fuels to supply all these electric vehicles because of the loss in transmission across the grid. The electric infrastructure will most definitely require improvement to make all these EVs happen, batteries or not. There’s a lot of wasted electricity in charging and discharging batteries vs. using power straight from the grid. All of these things are tradeoffs, and it would be great if we made smart trades for everyone on the planet instead of just trades that are lucrative for EV manufacturers. Getting more and better and reliable transit is a great investment. Using battery powered buses is great for the right use case, but it’s still a waste if there’s a more practical existing way to create more and better transit.
@@LeeHawkinsPhoto The electric grid is rather efficient, not much power is lost in transmission. Plus, burning fossil fuels at large scale plants is more efficient than individual motors burning them.
Perhaps most importantly, we already have a reasonable chunk of our electricity coming from carbon-free sources, and that percentage continues to rise every year.
Yup. San Francisco is currently paying 1.6 billion to extend a rail line a few miles, in a decade long project. That's not atypical for the city. It's definitely the case that making a massive move from roads to rail would be better in the long run, but realistically speaking, even if there was huge political will to do so, it'd take decades to complete. We need something in the interim to replace fossil fuel burning vehicles. There is really no reason we cannot do both simultaneously.
It makes me so irrationally happy to see people discussing different options for improving public transport, regardless of the specific arguments. We're united in our hope to build more livable cities which is an important thing to remember
I'd wager it's not irrational :)
Do you know any more good channels like his?
The problem is big cities, these shits are just band aids and not addressing the real problem. Remove big cities and let people live in small cities and suddenly everyone is going to use bicycle to work because why using a motor vehicle when you can just bike for a few km.
@@KAMZA. Not just bikes is amazing. It's all about public transport and city design.
@@kaikart123 can we build an extremely tall building? Just for a question
this year in Milano the public transportation company introduced buses that can charge on tram wires, but they have a "small" battery for the parts of their route that isn't electrified. I think it's a great idea, so they can drive around when there is an accident on the street, or when there is road/infrastructure maintenance without stopping the whole line
Seattle has had electric trolleybusses since after WWII and they have one advantage over gas busses and that is more torque for hills, especially if you need to stop on them every couple of blocks for bus stops. The transit system has some battery powered busses too but the majority of their electric busses are trolleybusses. By the way there is one trolleybus line that is 86 km long, in Crimea which I rode on back in 1997 and found to be a nice way to get around on that high-volume route.
Dude I like most of your ideas, but railing against battery-electric buses is just shooting ourselves in the foot. It’s a good tool in our arsenal that should be used in some circumstances but not others
1. Diesel Buses are only cheaper than Battery-Electric buses because we aren’t properly taxing carbon. Once we make it really expensive to pay for diesel, it will make the operating costs outweigh the upfront costs.
2. Buses do change routes all the time. In order do meet demand in different parts of the city as people move between different neighborhoods and as new neighborhoods get built. What’s the point of putting catenary wires up in suburbs that will become abandoned later due to densification?
3. Catenary wires are expensive to install and maintain (it’s not just put some up and never think about them, rapid transit uses 3rd rail for a reason), and slow to build. Getting a new order of battery-electrics is much faster, especially when your city is filled with NIMBYs who stymie any new infrastructure improvements.
4. Battery-electric buses aren’t even the scammiest bus out there. Natural Gas buses and “Trackless Trolleys” are much more of a scam/pointless than battery-electrics.
5. If we want a zero-carbon future, diesel buses can’t be an option. Which means there needs to be an option for routes that are too low-traffic for a catenary wire. It might make more sense for Hydrogen buses in some cases, and it might make more sense for battery-electric buses in others.
One of my favorite possibilities for Battery-Electric buses are for trunk-and-branch setups. Sometimes there are several bus routes that run for a while along a single trunk, creating frequent service (a bus comes every 7 minutes), but they branch off into the suburbs for less frequent service (a bus comes every 20 minutes). The trunk should be electrified which lets the buses recharge while running, and the suburban bus sections with shifting routes don’t need the extra expense of catenaries.
New battery Chemistries and new electrolyte technologies will drive down the cost of batteries. Currently a new diesel bus costs around $500,000 whereas an electric bus costs $750,000 according to data from 2019. However Solid State Batteries, chemistry like LFP and Sodium ion batteries, and larger production volumes will drive these costs down. BYD has already hit that inflection point where they can offer EVs at the same price as Diesel buses. Introduction of new battery technology will make these buses even cheaper going forward.
I really like your trunk and branch idea, fast charging through the city to power a battery for a suburban loop. Our trolly busses have a small battery, enough to get them to the side of the road when the pickups come loose.
Be aware, Hydrogen vehicles are definitely a scam, delve into how hydrogen is produced (mostly methane with carbon release) how inefficient it is (30% goes on motion, 70% lost to heat from conversion) and how the methane escapes making global heating even worse. Just like combustion engines, they pull oxygen out the air, making it have higher concentrations of nitrogen and pollutants. They market that they clean the air - which is true - but then they use that pure oxygen to produce water - it's not like they exhaust oxygen richer air, quite the opposite.
Oil and Gas love promoting Hydrogen, because it distracts and delays the take-up of battery electrics and they can pretend hydrogen *is* green because it *could be* green, even though they know it will never be produced from renewable electrolysis at scale, it would be so expensive nobody would buy it, and hydrogen is already more expensive per km than gasoline even when produced from cheap fracked methane.
Oh, and the fuel cell is made from platinum and wears out after a while, and all the high pressure tanks and interconnects need regular inspection .... I can go on .... it's really bad, but the propaganda for it is well funded.
I don't disagree but I think we should aim for sustainability before going emission-free. Methane busses are better than many other sources in that regard and while we are getting greener the power going to electric busses still has to come from fossil fuels. Considering that Busses don't have a very long service life compared to things like trains do you really think the grid is going to move so far away from Coal and Oil that it will be cleaner than Methane by the time they are retired?
@@RRW359 thats a good point, I guess it depends on how and when they are charged. School busses, for example, are used twice a day for about 4 hours total, the rest of the time (including during day - peak solar) they can be used as a renewable battery storage resource, and, during peak evening demand (after the afternoon school run) they can be used to sell clean power back to the grid before charging again at night if clean wind is predicted.
Very flexible assets, that can make money in lots of different ways.
@@brushlessmotoring Not saying that Electric shouldn't be the ultimate goal just that Methane isn't as much of a "scam" or as "pointless" as OP said, at least for now.
Normally you make excellent points, but the ones in this video I find really thin. Your whole pros/cons list is just second-order effects from diesel busses being cheaper, so you can have more of them (a few are more like 3rd or 4th order). You dismiss electric busses because 'why not just put up some wire', but you don't mention how much that would cost, in either time or money. And even if all your points stand, that wouldn't make them a scam - they'd still be a form of public transit, and electric to boot, just less efficient than some of the other options.
100% agree - should have replied to this before i wrote my comment, the points made in this are kinda wack.
if a city already has trains, trams, but also buses for areas that are inbetween, why not convert that fleet to electric over time? wtf
@@fanofsongs Not to mention that the picture of how the trolley wires look like was misleading as f***. He seriously wants us to believe that it's just 2 wires floating in the air as the bus goes along, so there's never more than 2 wires over one street or crossing and never any poles supporting them? Jesus Christ... it's like watching a PagerU video. Did Adam ever seen the infrastructure around trolley busses? Cause I don't think so. Denying the ascetic issues of the trolley wiring is ridiculous, IMHO, especially if you want to cover most of the city streets in it!
Totally agree. Essentially all of the downsides described disappear with lower cost batteries which are improving in both capacity and cost at a huge rate. This hot take will age like milk. Diesel buses spewing poison gas, particulate and noise pollution will seem very archaic in only a few years
@@gbub Batteries wear out and are resource-intensive to replace, wires are not.
@@SkywalkerWroc We have a trolley system and I don't even notice the wires anymore to be honest. And on a lot of parts of route the bus is on a dedicated bus lane
So far the electric busses in New York i think have been a moderate success they are generally similar in capacity but its meant as a supplement to our subway system which is the primary method of getting around the city functionally every area is going to need to evaluate their needs and cost benefits functionally with a fleet of thousands of previous diesel busses there was a massive air quality problem associated with operating that fleet while this doesnt entirely solve that issue it has made an improvement. Id say overall like everything it needs to be carefully considered on a case by case basis and not treated as some people do as a universal solution!
You definitly should have emphasized the part, where electric buses can run to smaller villages more, instead of just writing a little note in the corner, because this is actually a huge advantage of electric buses. A lot of people including myself dont live in population centres, where it makes sense to build rail infrastructure
Bus routes changing is one of the greatest advantages of busses, adjusting routes to meet the changing needs of a dynamic population. In cities where the old busses are coming out of date and need to be replaced there is no real disadvantage to switching to electric long term, ignoring the pollution aspect it lowers costs and is a lot more realistic a solution to push through the bureaucracy of modern day city works. You can get electric busses up and operational in a matter of weeks, a cable network comprehensive enough to compete with busses is a decades long development. Take Toronto for example, they had street cars and a relatively comprehensive overhead cable system, the city expanded, the population center shifted, now those street cars are glorified tourist attractions.
Just to echo this, think about this in terms of the exploding sun belt cities in the US. Many of us transplants would love more public transit options, but they literally do not exists. Yes we can start building out some metros or light rail, but those won’t be completed for awhile. Because of the sprawl and ever constant construction in and around sunbelt cities, you need a flexibility mass transit solution that can be implemented rapidly. We already have the infrastructure for buses (roads) we just need to buy them.
I live in Toronto, agree completely 👌
I think calling Toronto's streetcars "glorified tourist attractions" is unjustified. The streetcars are a noticeably smoother ride than busses, have a higher rider capacity, and routes like St. Clair with exclusive sections of the street are able to travel much faster by avoiding traffic. There are obviously advantages to both busses and streetcars, which is why the city utilizes both.
Exactly! My city isn't exactly 'growing', but people shift to different communities pretty regularly, and businesses also are pretty quick to up and move with short notice, so our bus routes change constantly, with different stops opening and closing just about every month or so.
we used to use trolleys. still do. but then we moved the overhead wire onto the tracks to save space. and then we moved the trolleys underground. and then we called them "subways"
Usually love Adam's content but this is just a lazy video. Just because electric buses don't make sense in all circumstances doesn't mean they can't ever make sense, let alone are somehow a "scam". In order to make the point, Adam has to think up of random hypotheticals that aren't actually happening to his point. Like, sure, electric buses are expensive and aren't accessible to low-income countries, but nor are trolley buses...? Nor is rail...?
Trolley-buses also aren't applicable to every situation. One glaring issue is they can be hard to bypass, making express trolley-bus services logistically challenging. They also require a large amount of physical infrastructure that can honestly be incredibly aesthetically unappealing (and fiscally unappealing), especially for cities that aren't very transit oriented in the first place.
Electric buses are a great alternative that can help decarbonize transit quickly while greatly improving user/community experience. Adam should know better than anyone that transit isn't black and white; it isn't either this or that--there are different contexts for different modes of transport, and it's naive to simply hand-waive an entire form of transportation just because there are a few contexts where they aren't applicable. Just strange.
There's literally like 10+ arguments in this video that could be debunked using examples from my very own city. IMHO it's the weakest video Adam has made to date.
he is right, but the arguments laid out in the vid aren't super great. the real reasons for trolley bus supremacy are mainly the environmental benefits of having a MUCH smaller battery (and road wear saved by not lugging that extra weight around), their extreme reliability, superior energy efficiency and that it doesn't actually cost more to put wires vs do battery bus infra. and moreover the improvements to battery tech just make trolley buses better by increasing the amount of off-wire time they can run. trolleybuses truly are the GOAT
it's especially egregious that cities with existing trolleybus networks (looking at you SF) are spending money on battery buses instead of expanding the network or even taking the network down (looking at you boston).
express trolley bus service is actually really easy. you just put up two sets of wires, which is already common where different routes diverge. not fiscally or aesthetically uneappealing
@@andrewberger1882 Dual-mode trolleys, which is what Adam pushes, are no more reliable than diesel buses, and about as expensive as BEV buses. Also batteries can be 100% recycled, Northvolt is already doing it. Also the cost of wiring is not just in mounting it, but also in maintenance, which is why over the lifetime dual-mode trolley buses are *significantly* more expensive than BEVs.
"doesn't mean they can't ever make sense" did you watch the video? adam said this at least 3 different times that there are in fact some applications for electric buses but the way cities often switch to electric buses when trams or trolleys would be the more sensible options is what doesn't make sense
High pollution creating the batteries, high cost, poor range, poor performance due to high weight, dangerous (Tesla fire x 5) ?.
His arguments are sound and your complaints seem to come from the view that every sodding vehicle that has a monstrous battery “is the second coming of Christ”.
Battery power is not the elixir cultists such as yourself think it is.
They are actually really useful. In my city(Cluj-Napoca) we have really good public transportation and now we are switching to electric buses. Trolley buses requure wires and posts that hold the wires which ruin the landscape of the city. Normal buses are loud and in a big city it makes such a big difference having a silent public transportation option. Also, when you have hundreds of buses, the pollution and noise really ads up.
Ruining landscape vs climate disaster. Yeah.
@@tobilandsfried8083 what climate disaster? stop doing drugs
Minsk is full of trolleybuses everywhere amd the city is gorgeous. "Ruining the landscape" is your personal opinion
@@tobilandsfried8083 oh please
@@cyclingtexas1670 ask your grandparents. Mine went ice skiing on our river every winter. It was normal. Now we're happy to have one week of snow.
Look around and ask them if anything changed
In the region of Limburg in the Netherlands all the busses, even the inter city busses, have been replaced with electric busses like these and it works perfectly. No more stinky diesels next to you when you are on a bike and no ugly overhanging wires all around the historic cities.
this video is a good example of getting too comfortable with voicing ideas that others agree with: you may end up getting lazy with your takes. alot of the claims made in this video were just kinda thrown out there with no hard data or proof to back it up and rides that "slippery slope" fallacy real hard
I agree. This video is super lazy. He jumps all over the place with the arguments. For example comparing costs to a diesel, then moving on to say wires aren't visually polluting, without comparing cost of trolley buses, and then later basically saying "just use trains or whatever" as if laying tracks is cheap. Plus 14% of the video is an advert.
he's just so deep into the whole "dismissing electric vehicles" shtick that an actually good usage of an electric motor vehicle on the roads is labelled as bad because it's electric
He’s been hooked on the atlas VPN sponsorships, respect the hustle
He does it all the time. Snarky whines about Elon Musk for the sake of being snarky.
Watch his video shout point to point rocket flight. The “math” is horrible.
@xiaoka Lmao, just because this particular video is poorly made doesn't mean that he isn't right about Elon Musk. Seriously, I just feel how long you were waiting for Adam to make a bad video, so you could defend "muh Elon Musk" on a completely unrelated topic.
I believe in Trolley Bus supremacy
I submit to Train supremacy 🧎
I believe in tram supremacy
@@wh2960 Team "tram" let's GO!
the trolleybus that goes to the east horizon
Im a little confused by the video, I think (from a European pov) the only great point in this vid is that the routes dont change so you can get powered from power lines. My only question is in a city like London for example, is it economically viable to put up x hundred (maybe even thousand) kilometres of wire, rather than simply buy electric Buses. And I'm sure people won't like its look
The slave labour cobalt thing can easily be avoided by buying Cobalt from Australia or doing thorough checks on the source of Cobalt if they are to source from Africa. The safety issue is an interesting point but I wonder what the proportion of EV fires to EVs on the road is
things to note as well:
- diesel buses can be refurbished with electric motors and batteries
- installing catenaries only deals with a few bus lines - converting existing buses into trolleybuses or buying new trolleybuses then becomes another expense issue which only relates to places where catenaries are installed. then why not build trams?
- point 2 again, but with the emphasis on buses covering *all* places within city centers, suburbs, rural regions, maybe even intercity connections, and much denser coverages of areas near other forms of public transport (i.e. take the bus a few steps from your house, to get to the nearest metro station). If you focus on diesel (or even better, cng) buses for "electric is expensive, and batteries are dangerous" reasons, you won't be able to really get rid of these buses until the development "catches up" - you still will have coverage issues and walkability is not always a good argument against more public transit availability. Also building metro lines in suburban areas and rural regions is not a very good idea, the bare minimum requirement being commuter trains, which usually travel long distances with very separated stops (how do you get to those trains?)
Trolleybuses make sense in Copenhagen where battery buses have recently been implemented and there's loads of stuff hanging over the streets anyway
Atmospheric rail flaps also failed as they had to use lard on the leather flaps in order to maintain a seal, which all got eaten by rats, so they'd constantly have to keep replacing it.
Dude stop following me
Ey, we don't have proof for this....
There was also a larger metal flap mechanism on the original that later models dropped on later builds to save money, which protected the leather and lard/tallow from the elements. Which, of course, made them run worse and require more maintenance, which drove up the cost.
Just goes to show sometimes you gotta spend money to save money.
And then all the rats inside the pipes were minced by a piston of passing train
R A T V I S C E R A
HEY THAT'S THE GUY FROM THE THING!
Someone from Bogotá here, right now we have 655 electric buses and how it changed the city has been incredible, in the past there were a lot of old and small buses with not even Euro 1 certifications, and how polluting they were was unreal, with the new fleet the air quality index of the city has been improving and also the benefit for the citizens, those buses are part of Bogotá Intelligent Transport Systems, meaning those buses are analyzed every second and a AI is helping the buses operators and manager take better desicions on routes and frecuencies.
The same here in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I think this video overlooked a bunch of real cases. Especially when they made the argument that these buses wouldn't work in developing countries. He didn't do his research on how well these buses work in our neighborhood!
How do you feel about the BRT lines do you use them?
What you have there is really nice! But keep in mind AI (Artificial Intelligence) can be applied to everything, including diesel/petrol buses.
@@waltzofthestars2078 yes, but the difference is that over the lifetime of the vehicle they'll produce far less co2 in this case.
you dont need ai to run trolley buses, also electric buses are using lithium and cobalt, producing of which pollutes soil and water in South America and uses child slavery
the boston mbta silver line is pretty cool, it’s like a train underground but it emerges to drive around the airport like a bus. goes straight from south station to each terminal
Thanks for the Metroshuttle photo from 2014. It is parked on Piccadilly train station approach in Manchester. The building behind has a very interesting curvature and was recently refurbished. I have only occasionally used the Metroshuttle as I live in the city center and it only takes 15 minutes to cross from one side to the other. The bus is slower.
The uni where I work (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) recently set-up electric busses between two pretty distantly spaced camups locations, one of them being high up on a hill, almost in the countryside. I think this might be one of the cases where it makes sense, because putting up wires all the way up there past some farmland just sounds a bit ridiculous. That being said, most of the city of Zurich is full of trolley busses, which work perfectly and that will not change I suppose.
I was going to write the exact same comment :D
In my city majority of bus routes make sense. They tend to travel to a distant estates, often meeting with tram and/or train routes along the way, so you don't have to have the entire city tangled in wires (and no: that image wasn't remotely near representative of how the wiring for trolley buses looks like), while every part of the city and several villages beyond have the access to a good public transport. Being against electric buses is like being for diesel, IMHO.
While the distances are probably not the same at my uni (TU darmstadt) they've finally come around to build an extra tram line to the remote campus. But it's just because the busses were at full capacity. Not climate change. It also has its own Regio station but it's only serviced every two hours.
I think there are very few large cities where it would make sense to completely get rid of buses. I looked up a list of cities with the best public transit, and every one of them has numerous bus lines. Large cities like Paris, Madrid, Berlin, New York, Singapore, and Hong Kong, all with extremely well-rated public transit and a lot of rails, still have well over a thousand bus lines each.
Don't forget all the trams and electric trains.
I am not convinced, and I usually agree with you on most topics.
Trolleybuses are cool, a great option for many cities. But you're ignoring the cost of setting up trolleybus wires vs using existing infrastructure with electric buses. So overall electric buses are probably cheaper than setting up poles and wires, especially in sprawling cities.
Electric buses have a lot of advantages over diesel that you declines to mention as well, such as the smoothness and quietness of the ride and the lack of exhaust fumes that can be a problem when buses run down high streets.
I think you're ignoring the cost of wear and tear on a single electric motor versus the cost of maintaining some poles.
@@ata.cordarrelle isn’t that the argument he debunked in the video? He said that even if electric buses are cheaper in the long term, a developing country would rather set up diesel buses and have a low fixed cost even if the variable cost makes them spend more money eventually? I don’t see why that also wouldn’t apply to setting up expensive poles, which developing nations just can’t afford
@@ata.cordarrelle Trolleybuses have electric motors... They just have an external power source.
Who would have thought that a social sciences major has questionable takes on infrastructure and development?
snowfology is right and there is proof he is...... also busses can be smooth quiet and clean even with diesel engines not beeing convinced by proof is sadly what got these stupid monstrosities on the road, eventually they will set up wires, or they´ll go back to diesel
There are trolly busses in Vancouver, I loved riding on them! I wish my city would do something similar, and also a lightrail would be nice for all the satellite cities we've got popping up, and hopefully nice to use in town too haha. I really miss nice public transport, I have to rely on my car or a lime scooter, but those get costly.
Reminds me of that time when one of those electric buses cought on fire in Stuttgart a few months ago. Except it happened at night and nobody noticed. And in the depot where it took 40 other buses with it, both electric and diesel. They're all parked right next to each other after all.
Normally I agree with your vids, but this video missed the mark. From a city planning perspective, making thousands of kilometers of overhead wire is a nightmare and would cause a lot of disruption due to roadworks. Sure it would be better to have a properly electrified grid, but we dont, and until we do electric buses are good way for cities that can afford it to provide cleaner transport. Electric buses are essentially paying for the convenience to not fix longstanding grid issues. Obviously we should fix grid issues, but this can take years. So why not have a flexible electric system in the meantime?
To some degree agreeable, but the Trolleybus catenary is very cheap compared to the rest, it does not need a lot of tension in it, so you can easily connect it to the building around the street. Definitely an investment comparable to the e-buses themselves.
I've lived my childhood in a city with running trolleybuses and I'll tell you it's not that hard and it's already proven to work really really well.
The important thing is that it is actually getting fixed in the meantime...
Another issue with trains/trolleys is you have to have everyone along the route on board 100%. There was an attempt to run a Train from the MSP to the Mayo in Minnesota. It failed because every rural area fought it tooth and nail to “protect their small town feel”
There's a good solution to this - gyrobuses. Charge a flywheel at the stops with overhead wiring; use the flywheel to power the bus to the next stop.
In the event of flywheel failure (unlikely - flywheels can be run for a decade with no maintenance) or needing to move the bus outside of range for repositioning, the bus may be fitted with a diesel generator trailer to drive the electric motor.
Recent advances in flywheel design have greatly increased the efficiency of these devices, and - unlike batteries - they're good for thousands of charge-discharge cycles and can be charged in under two minutes. They don't hold much power, but recharging at each stop is no issue.
Every 3 - 6 months my city reviews it's extensive bus network and implements route changes to provide service efficiently to those areas that need it most. You can't keep that kind of flexibility if your network is built around caternary cables, especially in a suburban environment. Moving the routes would require extensive works to add the infrastructure along the new route. If nearby buildings are detached or single story, you need to install poles to support the caternary, which probably means partial road closures. The new infrastructure needs to be inspected by electricians, and connecting that infrastructure would cause service disruptions. And unused infrasturcture has to either be maintained or removed, both of which add costs.
Installing a new stop marker for an electric bus can be accomplished by two men in a matter of hours.
The single biggest advantage of busses is their flexibility. You are not tying yourself into a single route for the lifetime of the service. There is no reason to abandon this flexibility in the move to cleaner transit. Trollybusses and light rail both have their uses, but they are not a suitable replacement for every bus route.
Suburban environments are bad for public transportation overall. In larger cities you do not need to move routes that often especially higher capacity ones, the ones with enough traffic to justify going beyond traditional bus in the first place. Its not like they ever move subway tunnels or move tram lanes.
Thing with flexibility is that for high capacity transportation system you dont really need it because the city itself is flexible and will adapt.
There are btw cases when cities got literally killed by removing tram lanes and attempting to replace them with buses.
>but they are not a suitable replacement for every bus route
Yes. Which is why you use buses on such routes. But then the transition to electric buses is still likely not viable.
@@Techtronos why is the transition to electric busses on route where busses are the most suitable mode not viable? It's certainly cheaper over time (And any sensible government will asses these expenses overtime).
@@matthewparker9276 its not that much cheaper overtime because you need more of them to cover recharging.
Maintenance costs are also questionable. Diesel buses can last for literal decades.
You also can put the cost difference into something like more comfortable stops.
@@Techtronos even today, taking into account upront costs, running costs, and maintainence costs, electric busses are cheaper over time than diesel busses. The running cost benefits will only increase as renewable technology is developed and rolled out to provide for more of the grid making electricity costs decrease, and diesel costs will steadily increase as diesel engines are phased out in most major markets over the next 10-15 years.
With all those cost savings, you could even put the saved funds into something else, like more comfortable bus stops.
Do you need that flexibility though? They do it because they can. From my experience though lines actually only change very rarely.
I live in a city with trolleys, but my city is also investing in battery EV buses. There are more regular bus lines than trolleys, but trolley lines those with high demand so they are more frequent and have larger (longer) vehicles.
Funny thing is that some trolley lines have cable gaps!
Eg. in historic city center there are no cables and trolleys run on batteries. And they can connect automatically on next bus stop with cables.
What I don't get is why on Earth did he use developing countries as an example? Just because a country that pollutes more can't afford it doesn't make it a scam. Rich countries are able and willing to invest the large upfront payments as it is cleaner, quieter and saves money long term and as many have mentioned, bus routes change quite often so having all these electrical lines would make buses less flexible and therefore less useful which then affects the "SoCiO-EconOMiC bEnEfITs" because less people are able to access the routes and they cost more for less return as they're less efficient routes. Plus, I'm sure having all those wires installed ain't cheap, might be cheaper than electric buses but most likely will cost more than a petrol / diesel bus which once again affects the "SoCiO-EcOnoMiC BeneFiTS".
I was told by someone in the industry that trolley buses don't make much sense either, because of the huge cost of constructing the infrastructure.
Where the costs of constructing a trolley bus line are justified, a tram line is already better suited.
What you lose with tramlines is flexibility to divert around accidents / roadworks. I live very close to a tram network that can be super convenient but suffers from constant backups as people block the tramlines with fender-benders etc.
@@peetiegonzalez1845 Tram network that is not separated from the road is already a failure.
@@TryboBike
Tram network that's fully separated is just a train line
@@TryboBike Isn't that just a train? I thought the definition of a tram was a train that has tracks on the regular road, to maximise space usage.
@@peetiegonzalez1845 A tram is a specific technology of a light rail vehicle. Separation does not need to be full grade separation. Trajectories of cars and trams can intersect when necessary, but the moment trams and cars share a lane to a level that an accident on one can influence the other, you are faced with tram that is, effectively, just a very expensive bus.
In every city I've been to ( and it's been a few all over europe ) there was an expressed effort to separate tram and regular traffic flows unless it was unavoidable to mix them.
Hey, about this one , aside from airpollution and costs, you forgot about noise pollution. Electric buses in city areas make a lot of sense. Just living, biking, walking and or eating next to busy busline is a deterrent factor
Agreed, This is a massive point for me that Adam didn't mention. I live in a city that only has bus transport, and the amount of noise diseal busses make is annoyingly stupid. Honestly when I see an electric bus drive by i literally think "where did that come from" as opposed to hearing a regular diseal bus from 5 streets down.
Trolley busses are about as silent. Also, trams are technically louder, but they're still infinitely better than combustion vehicles and their throughput being so high it means you need fewer of them in a city environment with its high volume of people, thus reducing the overall noise pollution another way as well. This only makes sense as an argument against combustion energy vehicles, not against other electric options.
@@louisvictor3473 Trolley buses need wires; trams need rails AND wires. It's not feasible to put them all over the city, and there's a maintenance cost. Mine uses both trams and electric buses, supplemented with the diesel buses they used to have where necessary. That's where Adam's reasoning fails, because nearly no city will just scrap all of its existing buses to use *fewer* electric ones. The change will be gradual, and there are cost savings involved.
@@klaidas7409 not only that diesel stinks so yeah electric is a upgrade sure
I agree. Not sure if anybody here has ever played cities skylines, but if you do end up putting down a tram people get mad instead of happy because of the noise pollution and then you have to place down more medical stuff which just becomes a whole other mess too. Also, Adam actually PLAYS cities skylines so I don’t see why he just skimmed over it.
(not saying that this is just like cities skylines, just saying this is similar.)
It would be a good idea for some of the larger cities to put up some money to do a trial run of such a bus and compare the advantages and disadvantages to a fully battery powered bus. You make a lot of valid points.
not really, i live in a city that has had electric busses for more than 5 years now and we've literally had zero of the problems he has described. electric busses have been more reliable, less noisy and way less polluting. Honestly the difference was insane, you have no idea the difference it makes to have one of the most polluting diesel engines in cities off the road. apart from that, busses change their route surprisingly often even if its just a little. and still being a normal bus really helps with that
There are some trials being conducted in Germany and Sweden where stretches of highway are receiving electrification for trucks. Same principle as trolley busses but for freight outside cities. Currently there are 3 sections in Germany and 1 in Sweden, and according to initial reports it's a very promising system. In Germany even if trucks still used diesel for the parts of the journey not on the Autobahn, and only the busiest 1/3 of the highway network were to be electrified, it is estimated that if all trucks on those sections used the top wires, almost 2/3 of CO2 emissions from freight would be eliminated.
I usually appreciate your videos, but this one falls short of my expectations due a rather one-sided and narrow view.
The argument you make is that diesel buses cost half as much and are therefore superior, because you get twice the number of buses and therefore better coverage.
I haven’t researched the cost of buses, but even if we go along with your claim that electric buses are twice as expensive, there are a few things to take note:
- the most expensive part is the battery.
- technological deflation: as we advance in technology and scale up production, cost for batteries will go down. This has been happening for the last 10 years and the price per kWh will continue to decline.
- from an investment point of view, the initial cost is only part of the story. Much more interesting and relevant is the total cost of operation.
Electric buses require significantly less maintenance and are cheaper to run than a diesel bus. How much cheaper mostly depends on how cheap electricity is in the country that the buses are operated in. There will be a point of return on investment when running electric busses even if the initial cost is higher - the only question is when that’s going to be. In some countries it might not make a lot of sense due to the high cost of electricity, in other countries it might make a lot more sense.
Keep in mind that using electric buses reduce pollution inside of cities. Even if coal power plants are used, those are located outside of city centers in much less densely populated areas where pollution would affect fewer people.
Instead of recharging at the end of the day, electric buses could be recharged after every route. At the last stop, buses could be recharged whilst the driver takes a 30 minutes break. Even if it’s only possible to recharge the bus once or twice a day, this would reduce cost of the most expensive part of the electric bus - its batteries.
Another possibility is to use smaller - and therefore cheaper - batteries in a bus that can recharge on overhead powerlines whenever available. The coverage of overhead powerlines doesn’t need to be anywhere near 100%, as it would just be powered by batteries the rest of the time.
There are a lot of considerations here. I usually like and appreciate the videos you make, but I feel this is a rather poorly presented argument with a clickbaity title.
Thanks for this comment. I was also surprised by the low quality of the content. Really shallow and unprofessional.
The most sad thing was about batteries burning and their impact on the environment. If someone actually investigates this topic, they will learn about new battery tech and recycling. On the other side, there is fossil fuels environmental impact - which is huge!
I didn't want to down vote this vid, but I'll do so. It needs to be reworked - or at least part II made.
Charging can be a pretty big issue for electric buses. As far as I know, modern buses can't run all day without recharging and charging them takes time that could be used to actually transport people. So if the bus route takes an hour and the bus is charged for 30 minutes after each route, this means that you need 1.5 more electric buses than diesel ones to operate the same route. It's weird that Adam missed that really, this is a pretty obvious point.
Absolutely, plus the supposed fire risk is just wrong. The reality is that EVs are far less likely to catch fire than ICE vehicles and vehicles using Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries (like many electric buses do), even less so.
My experience as a passenger on an electric bus also confirmed they were also much cleaner, quieter and had a much smoother ride than the diesel alternative on the same route...
@@user-cc9zy3xl5f Well that's not actually a really an issue, it's not that hard to charge a bus quickly since they can just use a huge overhead port and don't need to rely on a limiting standard like electric cars do. At the same times bus schedules have scheduled wait times at either end anyways, this is partly for personal reasons like changing drivers or letting the driver have a break but it's also to make the schedule work, if you schedule in a wait at the end then even if the bus is late arriving to the last stop it won't be late for it's next round. If you scheduled buses to drive all of the time not only would that be inhumane to the drivers it would also just result in a cascading failure where a bus being late for any reason to one stop would result it in being late for the entire rest of the day, which could mean that a lot of people would miss their connection. So since the bus is already waiting there's no reason why you can't just have it quickly recharge there, and this means that we can have a much smaller battery since it only needs enough to make it's full journey and then it'll be fine.
Cost for batteries is unfortunately not decreasing - the cost of materials is increasing as they become scarce. However, uniform mass production makes recycling cheaper, and prices of lithium and cobalt are rising fast enough to justify the substantial cost.
For systems that are partially covered by lines, a high cycle/low capacity system like a flywheel or supercapacitors could work. Range may also be extended by a diesel generator used intermittently as needed or if grid power fails.
As an inhabitant of Arnhem (Dutch City), where we've had these trolley busses since forever, and it's a great system.
But outside of the inner city they don't make as much sense because changing routs, longer distances etc.
Fun fact, the main reason Arnhem has these busses is that they originally wanted trams, but there are a couple of very steep hills which trams couldn't use.
Also from a pollution stand point diesel busses are horrible se yeah
aren't diesel busses still better than like, cars? as long as they carry enough people who in turn didn't take a car?
@@younggod5230 it depends on emission standard of bus and these cars. Old buses generate hell lot of pollution, but new models ( EURO 6) are pretty good.
@@mikoajchudzikowski5818 Which is better? A heavily polluting old bus or 20 less polluting private cars? The car emission will add up to be either more or not much less than the bus, and come with all the disadvantages of cars.
@@mikoajchudzikowski5818 sure, makes sense. even if regular ol busses were better than cars, no reason not to improve them further.
@@hesterclapp9717 yup, I agree
4:10 - Cost is only half the picture. A cheaper bus suffers from diminishing returns and thus warrants less investment. Just cause it cost twice as much doesn't mean half the busses as there is more reason to reallocate resources towards busses. Also, twice the price is quite bearish, especially going into the future.
We have both in the Netherlands. There's trains and even some trams in the mox. However, literally all of our city buses are electric and they work perfectly fine
Question about the Netherlands, with such great public transit why would you need a car in the first place. What if you need to buy groceries, do you carry the groceries on the train?
@@raikouija663 Well, I live in the middle of nowhere in Limburg and don't own a car. Also haven't felt the need for it. As for groceries, I have two walking distance supermarkets and if I'm feeling fancy, I have three options bus distance. I do carry my groceries if needed and there's also home delivery options.
@@fabiolasilva6944 it’s interesting as an American because I sometimes wonder if the way to go is to get rid of the car entirely as a transportation option, because it seems like it has done more harm than good, tho I wonder with Bicycle lanes if motorcycles can go on them
@@raikouija663 Mopeds can go on bike lines. There's a max speed limit of 30km/h on them
@@raikouija663 bicycles!
The method.
We get bulky items like beverages delivered and do our fresh grosseries shopping using bicycles. Baskets in the front and in the back, if necessary a backpack.
Counterpoint:
- cost of an electric bus is bound to go down, as battery tech matures.
- fixed plant, such as electric wires, is not free and you need to justify its cost by having a heavy traffic under it
- multimode vehicles ( trolley + battery, or trolley + diesel ) tend to cost about as much as an electric bus and tend to be maintenance heavy
- electric buses are a great way to get a silent, eco-friendly transportation to low capacity, longer haul lines ( cough, american suburb, cough ) where distances don't justify trolley lines or rail
Overall - engineering is an art of tradeoffs.
I think he meant that electric buses are rushed
Don`t forget that trolley busses requires more infrastructure space (i.e. takes up a bit of the road), can be targeted for vandalism and looting (i.e. stealing the copper wire in it) as well as it can become a safety hazard for tall vehicles.
(electric) busses are more flexible. Don't get me wrong, I like the tram and train lines we have here, but busses also have their place. E.g. Schienenersatzverkehr.
Battery buses fail on power to weigh. That can not be fixed!!!
Counter-counterpoints:
- Then we should wait until it is reasonable to buy them instead of buying them now. You don't get a refund for the difference if something gets cheaper later. And even if the technology gets cheaper, the extraction of the materials needed are still extremely polluting, just not in the countries these batteries are usually operated in.
- That's the whole point, you need to have frequent public transport to induce its demand. If a bus is not available often enough, it won't discourage people from using their cars. Public transport doesn't have to make money directly, it's indirect benefits are great enough to justify even having deficits on some lines. It means investing money to get less cars on the road overall.
- A diesel engine that's barely used won't be that costly to maintain. It's just used for specific situations and won't have a lot of mileage on it.
- Longer haul lines shouldn't be serviced with buses but with anything close to a train because it's more efficient anyway. Rails cost less than the rubber on the wheels. Trams are better for that for sure and they are so silent they actually need to signal their approach.
Engineering is an definitely an art of tradeoffs but you need to justify the superiority of your new design over existing ones before trying to implement it. The best use for buses are small distance trips to compliment rail-based transports.
The bus in thumbnail is the city which I live in , but they dosent exist they are only for the airport service across the city and , I just got very much connected to Adam because I face problems everyday lack of good infra and public transportation and high polution. And he just speaks about it in very right and enlightening way I love this channel ❤️ (from Hyderabad,India)
I endorse this view, Kolkata 😂😂. The transport system is a joke.
Really? I was under the impression that public transport was good in india
@@abirami9481 It's decent, but still has a LOT more to go / progress, mainly becuase the amount of people is serves is very less.
@@darkmage4648 i know right 😂 , but once there was a time when city is good with trams (because of low population) and now it has to be upgraded ,but lack of upgrade and changes made it even worse, British did a good job actually in planning infra and railways some of them still in use.
@@abirami9481 yes in some cities its good ,then too it can't connect whole city and the availability is more, but the infra is at its worse ( except metro rails)
I like the fact that this video gathered audience that can think critically, does not blindly follow everything he says and can also actually discuss things with logical arguments rather than arguing. I think we all just kind of agree that it's okay to have other options/be wrong about certain things. That's very nice to see.
My city of Lucerne, Switzerland has found an awesome niche for an electric (battery) bus - with other lines having trolley buses or even hybrid trolley buses that switch from overhead power to diesel for the stretches that don't have overhead.
There's a bus line that starts in the city, goes 2-3 kilometres through the city centre, then up a hill/mountain, around 300m vertically, ~5km horizontally, along quiet residential roads - once or twice an hour. The bus used to be fairly noisy too.
So they switched to a battery operated bus for that line. Here it totally makes sense. Going up and down mountains only, infrequently, on a line on which no other buses travel. A lot of the energy used to go up the hill can be recovered by regenerative braking going downhill. The noise pollution that happened before is no more.
I agree that it doesn't make sense to just make everything battery powered just because though.
I think lucerne as a whole does it really well, using the correct buses for the correct use case.
Bendy overhead power trolley buses for the 2 'big' lines, departing every few minutes, that basically act as 'on street metro lines' because the city is too small for an actual metro. These also have stretches of bus-only lanes in the congested areas.
Overhead power buses with a backup generator/motor for lines that go along main stretches but then out a bit further, where it doesn't make sense to hang overheads.
A battery bus for the line going up the hill.
Hybrid buses for routes through the center with lots of stop-and-go traffic.
Regular buses for the lines that go out more into the less densely populated areas.
Normallly i agree 100% on your thesis, this time not so much. In cities that are stablished and don't change much and have had their grwoth stabilized, electric buses are a saving option in the long run and most needed cases for buses are already covered and these buses are to lower the mantainence cost of these routes
You have a point. But you are missing on the fact the trolley buses are cheaper, more effecient and less poluent do service the exact same route.
But building infrastructure in a city is about as fast as a 🐢, also it is insanely expensive and annoying for everyone that lives there. It will take ages, electric busses are a plug-in solution. Sure in time trolly or hydrogen/ammonia can be better, but that does not make electric busses a bad idea.
@@marcoferrao Not always. In the places where public locomotion is in private/mixed hands, you see more diesel buses and some electric ones. Private and mixed business always do the most profitable action.
And if a trolley line was more profitable, i would see a lot of them being installed right now.
@@marcoferrao trolley buses and over head wires cant be implemented in most indian cities or any developing countries. The roads arent so well planned out.and they provide more flexibility. A gradual shift from diesel to electric in cities like Mumbai delhi have helped quite a lot.
@@EspenSkaufel In my local city of Edinburgh it cost £776m to build a single 14km tram route. Building overhead wires for even the top 10 bus routes would likely cost billions. In comparison they could replace all 700 buses for around £250m.
Here in Denmark we switched out all our diesel busses for Electric ones 2 years ago, and we have absolute no issues at all... We also got electric city trams and they are probably the best investment we have made in recent time, calling it a "Scam" is honestly the dumbest thing i have heard about E-busses
Totally
Jeg har da ellers taget bussen hjem fra skolen, alle de dage jeg har været i skole fyssisk de sidste 2 år og jeg husker ikke jeg har set en eneste elbus.
Not only Denmark, many contry in Europe. The enginer have 10 times less problems, it's very easy to repair and more cheap than use diesel. In Europe we don't have petrol like EE.UU, petrol is more expensive, because this we already have trucks too. Mercedes-Benz and Volvo EV trucks th-cam.com/video/_n-aPqeRDqw/w-d-xo.html
does this guy know buses are a viable method of transport? not everything is a train
We arent even close to having switched out all diesel busses here in Denmark... a couple of cities have switched parts or all of their fleet out with electric busses but its far from the majority, and then some cities like Sønderborg have biogas busses. Idk where you got the idea that all busses was switched from, but it couldn't be further from the truth.
Dublin resident here. It took us 5 years and cost over €300m to lay an incremental 1km of tram rail in the city the last time we tried it. It also took a dumb route and you can walk the distance in the same time the tram takes. We’d be lost without buses.
Here in Seattle we have three way hybrid busses that run off overhead trolley lines on most major arterials, and utilize a diesel-electric hybrid system when they cannot and I believe they are "flex fuel" setups that aren't tethered to traditional diesel so they can use CNG fuel cells. Our garbage trucks also use a "flex fuel" setup and some of that CNG comes from the municipal waste itself. Compressed natural gas seems like a good solution for certain stuff.
Bus routes do actually change. Sure it might be every year or three, but that's faster than any sizable public infrastructure project I've seen.
Also, it defeats the advantage of buses which is a low infrastructure cost (both capital and maintenance).
In the LA area I encountered numerous pages with the Blue Line (light rail) when rain caused the electrical equipment to fail on a given segment. I had no faith in a transit agency keeping up with the required maintenance on a trolley system.
In Romania at least in my city about 50-60% of busses are trolleys which move on the main arteries which are arguably unchangebale. Special routes ex: to/from smaller towns/villages which are essentially hugging the city are diesel busses, I think we do have a few electric ones aswell. Anyway the point I'm trying to get at is that unless thete is a hugely severe storm (trees getting shreded and falling on the lines) the trolleys rarely if ever get blocked. The arms are flexible enough for the trolley to change lanes and if one of the arms falls for whatever reason, the driver can just place them back in a few min.
@@bonticabogdan9961 I'm glad transit works in your area. I'm simply stating that my experience with light rail is that they work when they were new but a few years later they start to fail. Basically, I don't trust them to maintain the electrical equipment enough to prevent excessive breakdowns.
It's not the system per se but lack of trust in the transit agencies around here.
well then it just doesn't work in LA, because where I live trams and trolleybuses go almost 24/7, they only struggle the first few cold days of winter, because some of the wires are covered in ice crystals. It usually takes two or three sweeps done by special trams that break the ice crystals and the rails are kept serviceable by road salt... I have never encountered an issue with heavy rains and trams, if the roads are flooded, busses struggle as well :-D
@@Sho-td8wg your arguement is basically, here is anecdotal evidence and I dont trust anyone cause of my personal feelings toward public transportation agencies. Sometimes people just make mistakes, but maybe the reason they dont care about their transit system is because the people in LA dont force them to account for it in elections.
Correction: You don't have faith in YOUR transit authority. In the rest of the world, where public transit authorities are actually competent, this is not an issue. I live in Ireland, probably the most rain soaked nation on the planet and rain has NEVER been an issue for Dublin's light rail network. Idiots crashing their cars into trams is however an issue. But that's human failure, not the weather.
Leaving aside the socioeconomic argument you made, without proof btw, from an engineering standpoint you are wrong on several points in the video. A trolley bus might be cheaper in per unit cost, because it only needs a smaller battery, but the cost of building and maintaining a catenary system throughout a city is way higher than you think, and for smaller Citys it doesn't make sense to set up this system for a small number of busses instead of going for some purely electric busses.
The main reason why cities and transport authorities get electric buses is to get rid of diesel buses which cause noise and exhaust pollution. So to advocate for them as you did is farcical.
The best solution for innercity, above ground transport are hybrid(electric and trolleybus) systems. To dismiss one half of the solution, while praising the other when they can complement themselves is erroneous.
and yeah batteries are mined in horrendous conditions, but with the advancement of battery tech, the amount of cobalt in them will drastically shrink over the next years.
Horrific conditions, but dont worry! Eventually we will only need a fraction of the children in the mines...
@@chronomage13 it’s still a valid point
@@chronomage13 yah the point still stands...
Well, I habe to disagree. The best system for cities are trams. Railway tracks are much more durable and efficent than streets with heavy traffic on rubber tires.
But it is always a question of what is the best solution for the use case. Trams are more suited for dense populated areas, electric buses for connections from low populated areas and trolley buses for some use cases between.
THIS IS WHAT I'M FINDING FOR!
The video creator claims is near bias. Not looking with the benefits of Advance Technology, Pollution.
Another reason to use battery-powered electric buses instead of trolleybuses is that some bus lines pass under bridges that barely fits them or roads with roadside trees that has grown too big to fit those overhead wires. You can also have electric double deckers which would be a nightmare when implementing overhead wires- also take in the consideration that you can run bus lines pretty densely but installing overhead wires over every street would be a nightmare.
You can't just pull a wire like that across 4 lanes of traffic, 2 big sidewalks and then 2 big strips of grass and trees between buildings that aren't aligned so canaries are required
Great video. I had back to back weekends in two different cities and used public transit in each. In the first, there was a convenient light rail line. The second had only diesel busses. The light rail was quiet, pleasant and comfortable. The diesel busses were loud, rattling and unpleasant. In the town with light rail, many different people were using public transit. In the diesel bus transit city, the transit patrons were largely poor. BRT and electric busses aren't the solution though. I agree with the video. Build light rail, trams, and trolley busses depending on the application. Build rail for intercity service.
I disagree on one point. In Brisbane, Australia; electric buses actually make alot of sense due to the distance at which people commute (20km) combined with the lack of population density and the many number of hills and expensive property that restrict building rails for trains and overhead electric lines.
_Alot_ is a town in India. _A lot_ is more than one.
@@coloradostrong8285 wow i mispelled, oh no what do i do...
@@joshpage4547 Guess you have to be publicly shamed and mocked mate, sorry.
How else are we going to know what you were trying to say to us?
@@BeKindToBirds Sounds like fun! Thanks mate :D
But no one has ever made a battery that can go more than 1000 miles without EXPLODING and destroying the bus. Then you need a new bus BIGLY COST. Electric motors and FAT battery make the tiers catch fire BIGLY POLLUTION.
You're right though. Over head wires would require more infrastructure maintenance and when the buses are not being used vehicle to grid capabilities could lead to EVs better paying for themselves.
The joke about a bit strowmany but I still think it's funny.
th-cam.com/video/c54cFEKlYBo/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/FbzL09SoHdo/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/Wp6593LgeYA/w-d-xo.html
One point that Adam failed to address is installation and, very importantly, maintenance costs of overhead wires for trolleybuses. It would be interesting to do an honest comparison between electric buses vs trolleybuses vs diesel buses including all costs including maintenance. Virtually all cities that have trolleybus networks are getting rid of them or, at the very least, not expanding them. What annoys me is that there are always people who have extremely strong opinions and are fans of some particular mode of transit (e.g. trolleybuses) for some personal reasons and simply can't accept any data or facts that don't support their views.
@@falsch4761 trolley lines are not practical to be installed everywhere... But that's beside the point. Main point for electric busses is in supply chains and gradual infrastructure transition they allow for. As well as a more flexible and lower barrier for entry in the public transit system.
Well pointed out
Trolleybus networks are not usually being expanded, but I don't think that's necessarily because they don't work. They work very well but only in very specific areas, i.e. very busy downtown streets that many busy bus lines use. Then the cost of infrastructure is offset by just how many buses it's able to power.
Once you get to the more peripheral routes though, it's clearly not worth it to set up the wires for 1 bus line that runs every 20 minutes. So there's no reason to expand.
(And you definitely wouldn't want to replace the entire network with trolley buses like this video suggests! Those peripheral routes are a perfect candidate for electric buses.)
To add to this, in narrow inner city streets, the wires usually attach to building walls - it would be interesting to find out how this impacts building maintenance, especially given that most of these buildings were built long before trolleybuses were a thing and were not engineered for that added vibration that the moving wires introduce to walls.
Perhaps take a look at Zürich, where trolleybuses work, are incredibly successful and is expanding
Electric vehicles are becoming (comparatively) less expensive over time, and the larger the market becomes, the more incentive there will be for companies to enter the market and increase competition, invest in R&D, etc. Based on the information you've provided, they don't sound like a practical solution to much of anything yet, but I think they definitely have a future.
You have got this completely wrong. The only way electric vehicles can become cheaper is if they retain their current trivial market share. Economies of scale will not offset the soaring costs of scarce raw materials needed in abundance for batteries based on existing technology.
In general, I agree with the whole statement. However, for regional and city buses you could actually use alternative battery types than Li-Ion since you could charge offline them at their central hub which they are usually returning to at given times. Alternatively, you could also use hybrid buses, as they do in my state capitol. Buses have to brake a lot, so there is a lot of energy that can be used to convert that energy into electricity, likewise if they have to accelerate then just use the stored energy. You could also this, even for electric buses, to recoup some energy. For poorer countries, going hybrid seems to be the better solution anyway because they couldn't afford the service infrastructure needed for battery-based operation.
While I fully agree that buses should run on overhead wires inside cities, there are more routes where this is not viable than one might think. Hybrid battery trolleybuses are able to solve the drawbacks of both systems.
You mean like connecting rural communities?
all modern trolleybuses have batteries for off-wire capability. not really hybrids
There is no way rural areas are accepting trams or have the financial capacity for trains
@@Jay_Johnson It's a miracle rural areas are still having regular bus lines at all. It's a bit too easy for the local government to convert it to call-a-bus systems which are having a different, less accessible feel to regular bus lines.
We are just getting an electric bus service that replaces a diesel line in our little riverside community in Kent, England. And I could not be happier. Yet the overhead wires for a trolley bus service would not work because there are multiple councils who should agree on it and... well forget that ever happening. Our council usually can't agree with itself let alone with other councils on anything... also the bus navigates a winding road with roundabouts and whatnots... I guess we really are the niche application for the electric bus service.
I agree that dense inner city routes can easily attach the wire to the houses on both sides or poles and call it a day and those cities usually have an overarching authority to do it efficiently. As long as our councils do not grow up to become more cooperative a trolley bus I do not see happening in suburban/rural communities...
I also agree on the box-checking aspect of anything electric these days... be it cars or buses... they are all a side show in the big picture...
but also try hanging overhead wires in that indian community you showed the picture of and see how many people will think it would be an excellent alternative home electricity source to tap for free :D
I gotta disagree with you on this one. In Groningen,(a small Dutch city 200k inhabitants) it's not viable to "put wires up" the buses go through the entire city. The buses go as far as 30 Kms. Not just to cities. It's not economically viable to make a train to a town with just ~~50k~~ 5k inhabitants.
Germans have trams to even smaller cities, but those lines take a long time to develop and a lot of inconveniences. Apart from that, I agree. Also, the maintenance of electric vehicles is far easier and cleaner.
@@scientific_paper I made a mistake, I wanted to say 5k not 50k I live in a city with 50k inhabitants right now and I love the train
@@Schwello. we have some smaller railways with narrower spurs for less dense areas (connecting villages and small towns), some of the lines arent electrified either... they see a lot of use, so its rentable in smaller towns as well, but only if they deliver easy acess to regional hubs in regional centres. ours are decently fast, like a car ride from time, but u can read or something.
i know towns with less than 5k people have a train, there even used to be towns with less than 5k people with trams or tramtrains
@@reloup8969 I know, but that's just if there's already rail. Building a new railway connection is financially impractical.
I'm gonna talk about my POV about electric buses and their benefits in my city.
First. They of course help in the pollution problem in my city. I live in Santiago, Chile, we are surrounded by mountains and hills everywhere. Air ventilation is almost non existant. So having a major part of our busses being replaced by electric ones, is making the air quality a bit better. In case you where wondering, we don't have power plants inside the city for that reason. They are outside cause if it were the case, the air would be pratically unbreathable and we all would be dead by now. And also,
non conventional renewable energies have been making a major breakthrough lately, they are making up around 35% of the total electric energy generated and they are growing faster and faster. So saying that having electric buses doesn't really have a difference cause you're going to pollute by generating electricity in power plants anyway, it's not entirely true.
Second. I really think it would be impossible to install overhead wires, except in some cases where there are great avenues with exclusive runways for buses. In those cases it would be plausible. But there's so little of those in comparison to the rest of the streets around the city. So having these different types of buses just for that small amount of avenues, instead of using the same models in the entire city, would be an unnecessary hussle. Like, the same thing when you talked about monorails, why have those different kinds of trains when you already have the usual models. It would make us have a specialized team in overhead wires buses, appart to the one that works in the usual ones.
In conclusion. My city isn't built for overhead wire buses, even less for fossil fuels powered ones. Electric batteries buses seem to be the best choice for now. Also, I think there haven't been any problems with these buses until now and we've had them for a while now. But, who knows, maybe the government isn't telling us everything, you can't never trust them completely, even less when you live in Latin America, lol.
In copenhagen we have electic busses, a metro, fairy busses, and a train network, and the busses are great, there's often a lot of road work happening in the city, or new metro stations or light rail being build, fucking up the routes, but the busses are way more flexible than something on rail
Man I just saw an electric bus here in Mumbai, India and thought it was super cool that mass transit on road in now electric! I understand the points made here, but I am not convinced for some reason. The points about socioeconomic loss and tax loss kinda ring hollow because this is not an exercise in isolation (budget can be increased for this by the govt as well). Also, atleast here in India, many city roads (especially the old areas) already have a tangle of wires, I think sorting that out and introducing electric lines for the buses will be too much of a task as compared to just switching to an environmentally friendly version.
Man the electric buses are so much better than our usual pmt and st buses in pune..
Has there been an increase in electric rickshaws / tuk tuks in India? I feel replacing as many dirty 2 stroke engines with modest sized battery packs in smaller vehicles will have a huge impact on pollution without needing large amounts of infrastructure to be built. Can be charged while the driver takes food breaks, or overnight.
@@brushlessmotoring big companies are investing in EV so there is an increase of all electric vehicles cars busses rickshaws
Haha yes, just increase the budget... Wait, what, we're out of money? Just tax the poor even harder than before lmao! And don't forget to raise ticket prices of course so poor people can't afford to ride a bus at all. They may try to go back to using diesel cars, but we just made them illegal and we can profit from it by putting poor people in jails, lol, lmao!!!!!
Truly American Dream, too bad I am not American and I am not sleeping...
"Electric buses are a scam. Anyway, here's my 2 minute ad about my favorite VPN"
Man needs to eat
@@crackingflags101 You don't need to sell out.
In the UK we have private bus companies, and as such, they won't use trollybuses because for them they don't make sense as their routes change to match what is commercially viable fairly regularly.
Frenchman here, with a bus route with hybrid buses. Not only are those a pleasure to ride because they're minimally noisy, but recently, the city announced they're shutting down the main road my bus goes through for around a kilometer, for three months.
Thankfully, we didn't have to wait for trolley wires to be put in the street the bus takes as replacement! It just deviated smoothly.
Man, every video is just basically:
Train better than the other stuff
They really are though
He works for sir toppem hat and big rail
@@poposterous236 i would take big train over big plane and car
He's our train evangelist.
They really are.
There is sense in what you're saying, but most shanty towns, and many non-shanty but less developed towns often would require a total revamp of the roads, whether for trams or wire-powered buses. This in itself can be a prohibitive cost in the short term despite the potential benefits over the long term.
It's a bit like being caught in a rent trap. Never enough money to make the jump to the better solution because you have to spend on the immediate problem.
This is true, for poor roads, wire powered busses have higher chance of failing
Wellington NZ had a large scale trolley bus network, and they got rid of it, in favour of regular buses, eventually moving to all electric buses. Disconnects from the overhead wires were common, and the inflexibility of the network turned out to a major problem.
A few more points:
-Downtime on diesel busses are significantly shortened. a 10 minute refuel will put a bus back on the road, and can run essentially all day. That bus can be shared with multiple drivers.
-Electric busses will reduce capacity even farther by having to charge. The time the bus is down to recharge, is time it's not spent transporting passengers. Might be less of an issue if you don't have as many routes in the evening/night, but still: It has less flexibility for that reason alone.
-Electric grids need to be stable to support charging. Some countries, brown outs are incredibly regular. If you can't get to your job because the busses that are running at half capacity (or wasn't able to charge the night before), you're going to have a bad time.
-Extra wear on roads. Batteries are heavy, more weight, more damage to roads. Even where I live, there are ruts in the bus lanes, make a battery bus...bigger problem
"Most bus services run in cities and don't change their routes."
- no, I think that's where trams run (at least, where trams should run). Buses are for less-dense areas and they need to be able to change routes at will. I live in a streetcar suburb in Seattle, and less than a year ago, several of our bus routes got routes changed. We have trolleybuses along main routes, and there are a few routes where (honestly) buses should be replaced with trams, but we also have regular hybrid diesel buses, which are good for when routes need to change, so I don't thing trams or trolleybuses could adequately replace those.
I think Diesel buses are fine and we should focus on building tram routes first before we should consider electric buses.
Right? Im not taking a TRAIN 4 miles to my closest town...
most bus services change their routes.
Not even that, in a city like santiago, is very normal for an important road to get blocked, maybe protests, accidents or work.
Bus routes are constantly being rerouted here, and a trolley service would just have to stop working.
I would say that trolleys are just unfeasible on santiago.
I think he's operating from the view of a European where cities don't change much (and thus bus lines are stable) vs cities that are actively growing with changing demographics like many cities across the Americas. There are a lot of infrastructure and urbanist channels that put European cities on a pedestal while forgetting that difference.
The "niche application" where electric busses make sense is actually pretty common in the US. There's plenty of bus routes in small cities (or regional routes connecting nearby cities) that have such low ridership that fixed transmission wires wouldn't be worth the investment. In a lot of the U.S the only realistic choices are busses or literally no public transportation at all.
@timemachine_194 considering the sheer size of the u.s. if more public transport became more common i doubt city to city public transport will be that common or affordable unless there either very close or spread into eachother.
@timemachine_194 Although the HSR network in China is massive, its debt is massive as well.
you don't need to have such a vast system. There are routes, that could be covered by HSR in the US, then ever more fine grained public transport would be used.
The reason why @caveman314 thinks buses are the best is, that there are only few reasons to use public transport. If instead a state or even nationwide integrated system would exist, using public transport would make more sense, as it would have more destinations to choose from.
@timemachine_194 yeah and that's why they are trillions in debt because of it
Sorry, no one thinks of US when talking about public transportation. You literally don't have public transportation. You don't even have railroad.
@@boobo we have *railroad* just not for people. The US has the most rail in the world, it's just dedicated to logistics and freight instead of public transport because cars serve the average person a better service than public transit in the US so it just never took off outside of cities. In Europe it's the exact opposite, barely any rail dedicated to freight, since the countries are so small and densely packed, with trucks having the ability to handle most of all shipments from sea or land port to destination.
what i find most common for a reason why commuters like electric busses more is that its quiet, but in my city (budapest) we've just got new MAN Lion city busses that are literally have barely any sound. People also brought up the fact that its hard to install overhead wires over a big ammount of area, which is true but we shouldn't exclude trolleybusses just cause of that. if a city cant afford high ammount of trolleybusses, they still should invest in disel busses and invest the money that would have went to electric busses for trolleybus lines which is in my terms mega efficency
Well I am from Mumbai, India, 'A Developing Country'. We already had a well established public transport network in major cities here like Mumbai and Delhi etc. So bringing in the electric units isn't a problem as we already have the old diesel ones running. Plus the growing cities which need completely new fleets can easily buy the required amount of units with government subsidies as the need arises. We know it's a good investment as its compatible with new tech, extremely flexible and low on maintenance too. Several cities here already have majority electric fleet and they are already a big shot. Also as the government builds more electric expressways, the electric units will modernize the intercity services too. So idk what u r talking about.
Hope you don't mind some feedback. I assume this is the case for many cities, but can't say for certain, so I'll comment for Melbourne, Australia:
there is simply no way that the infrastructure required for electrification in a trolley bus style would ever be be implemented for 900+ buses over 350+ routes, spanning hundreds of kilometres. The cost of the infrastructure itself, the downtime on roads as they're installed, etc. would be phenomenal. Why do that when they could just spend an extra 500k AUD per bus to get electric buses with 500km range? (they're already trialling them btw).
Of course developing countries aren't going to be able to afford cutting edge electric vehicle technology, nor should they be expected to, it's the responsibility of the developed countries to do as much as they can to reduce their own carbon footprint.
I do agree with the rest of your points though, Melbourne has awesome trains (for longer distances) and trams (for shorter inner city commutes), but for last mile and linking suburbia, there is absolutely no chance of a trolley bus system in Melbourne.
5:50 "it's better to use diesel or trolley buses" - as outlined above, trolley buses isnt gonna happen. So why keep our diesel buses, instead of taking the plunge and swapping them for electric buses?
edit: our tram network also uses 100% renewable energy sources
Pushing for diesels is the most ridiculous thing in that entire video.
Melbourne is probably an outlier here, in that it would make more sense to expand its tram network than create a trolleybus network from scratch. However successive state governments have mostly been disinterested in extending the tram network even for short distances where it would make a lot of sense, for example running trams to Chadstone Shopping Centre.
@@SkywalkerWroc not really, cuz a-busses are expensive toys. And i know what I'm talking about.
What Melbourne should do is install either trolleys or trams over its most utilised bus routes. Strategical replacement can result in very high returns for very low amounts of investment.
Basic idea here being, if we have one bus route that runs 10 minute frequency and one that runs 1 hour and they run over the same distance we'd get 6x more value by converting the more frequent of the two, frequent busses tent to run short routes too (with notable exceptions) so less infrastructure.
I would have said that Monash would be a good place to start basing a trolley network, but considering there's plans to get trains and possibly trams running there anyway (thank fucking god), maybe less so now.
What we should do is take some of the busiest bus routes, we'll ignore the 601 and 733 since those two bus routes are likely to be obsolete once the first stage suburban rail loop is complete, as well as the 301 which will be obsoleted, eventually when the second stage is complete. We should be taking the other very busy bus routes, such as the 495, 401 (north Melbourne), 529 and considering converting them into trolleys. For the bulk of other routes, as well as the routes like 601 that are set to be mostly replaced by the rail loop we should consider electrics. Over time however we should want to replace more bus routes with trolleys or trams in some cases however, since the mining of rare earth metals for batteries is highly environmentally destructive.
My point of view here is that battery busses make a good stopgap, but we shouldn't want to treat them as a permanent solution. We should always be looking to convert the busiest few bus routes to trolleys as electrics exit service.
@@Lankpants "My point of view here is that battery busses make a good stopgap, but we shouldn't want to treat them as a permanent solution" - it's not a stopgap, it's a solution to a problem that's not efficient to be solved by trams/rail.
I love your stuff but this one is off-base. 1) Safer batteries are already a thing. There are literally tens of thousands of electric buses on the road, not a fire among them (yet). Also, incidence of fire in electric vehicles in general is still WAY lower than in combustion vehicles; it's a red herring.
2) Electric buses aren't twice as expensive as diesel. And they're getting cheaper all the time.
Let's be clear, in 2021 diesel isn't "better" ANYWHERE.
When I say "I love your stuff", I genuinely mean that. You've quickly become one of my favorite commentators on TH-cam. And your point on checking boxes is well-taken, but there are honest, decent use cases here.
Apparently the number deployed is somewhere around 600.000. And yes, most e-busses use a safer battery chemistry (e.g. LFP). That doesn't mean they never spark nasty fires, a few already burned down. At least I know about some in China and some in Germany, but some chemistries make it much more unlikely. Yet "not a fire among them" isn't true, although they are rare. And no, you shouldn't directly compare the overall incidence rate of fires between EVs and combustion vehicles to draw conclusions on how much of a problem that is, since an EV fire is a more often a rather serious thing.
Deployed: www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-08-13/electric-buses-are-poised-to-get-a-u-s-infrastructure-boost
Fires: www.cleanenergywire.org/news/several-german-cities-halt-use-e-buses-following-series-unresolved-cases-fire
Well, I have to admit there actually HAVE been a few EV Bus fires, a big one in Hamburg last summer and another in China, so I have to stand corrected and admit it happens. I'd still say there's a fair chance this gets resolved, though and results in a safer fleet than diesel buses.
This is not the first time he’s this far off base.
I'm not sure of your reference point for electric buses but they are close to twice the cost of diesel buses. A transit bus with over 600kWh can cost you about $1 million US. The problem is the energy capacity of batteries are constantly increasing in order to address range limitations however the cost per kWh is remaining constant which results in a higher capital cost. The other challenge is durability/degredation. Most of the battery manufacturers are anticipating at least 1 battery replacement in the lifecycle of a transit bus in the US. The problem is that the battery is the most expensive part/ largest area of risk in the bus. Most estimates put replacing the batteries in at over $200k US.
also you cant ‘just take the train’ if you live in a rural area where the closest train station is an hours walk away over a major highway, buses are the only option and it would be pointless to build a trolley bus line for so few people
You made some fair points, but I feel like you missed the biggest advantage to electric busses, comfort. The diesel buses in my city are unbearably loud making even short commutes a nightmare, also diesel buses have much worse torque making speeding up after stopping very slow. I live in a small city that is car infested, it would cost too much to implement the infrastructure proposed in this video making electric buses a nice middle ground that stays within budget while increasing speed, comfort and removing some emissions by pulling diesel buses out from the streets
In Singapore, companies deploy their buses flexibly. That means to say a bus could be operating on service 97 today, and possible service 98 tomorrow. It allows flexibility in the system, and buses can be easily replaced if there's a breakdown. Additionally, due to the development of rail infrastructure, bus routes can be rationalized and have major, permanent changes to their routings
I like electric buses. Improving bus service in the US is one of the cheapest ways to address public transit. It also has the advantage that the routes can be changed as the needs of the city change with time. Electric busses are more expensive but the cost of vehicles is not the main factor in US cities limited bus service. Buying one or two shiny new electric buses might be enough to generate additional interest in public transit and doesn't have all the legislative hurdles of trains or trams.
Probably wont generate more interest. The people who use the bus have to in the US, everyone else uses a car. Your arguement is we shouldnt do the optimal solution because government said its harder.
@@chronomage13 'Everyone else uses the car' is only true because busses are seen (and treated) as a last-ditch option for poor people. If some decent busses start being used that aren't noisy and smelly, and the route doesn't put them in a traffic jam of cars, it might actually take cars off the road.
Interest is a huge and often overlooked aspect of increasing public transit usage in the US! I know from experience in my own city that thousands of people who never thought twice about the way they moved around take public transit now because a bus route was upgraded to a light rail. The extra visibility and novelty has spawned billions of dollars of development along the route. I doubt electric busses would have quite the same impact, but the concept is the same; “upgrades” of any kind can totally increase interest and usage.
The problem with trolley buses in a place like india is that people will absolutely not respect the lane amd drive/walk in front of it. The thought of actual dedicated sidewalks/bicycle lanes/bus lanes in india sounds so idealist.
True. We could build tram limes but the government will probably say they're too expensive.
@@dhruvtukadiya honestly i would rather live in the infrastucture that exists now instead of the govt trying to build new ones that will obviously be dangerous and low quality.
Well, I have read that Kolkata, India still has trams which are just an equivalent of trolley buses.
His idea here only really work in Europe. Trolley bus also don’t really work in my city due to typhoon/rain season that usually fucked up wires. Tram line can still be manage. But for trolley buses the line overall is way longer and more shit to fall on the wires during bad weather conditions.
Also there are simply places that no wires can be placed without placing many poles.
Lastly, some street had too much width and our buses here are double deck, this means the wires need to be taller and more support need to be had when placing them higher up.
Trolley bus is good for some places, but in many places electric/hydrogen bus is simply better because there r no overhanging wire everywhere
@@dhruvtukadiya Trolley buses are also quite expensive to build. Not as much as trams, but the cost *is* high. And it's not just a cost of building them, but then maintaining as they inevitably start to break down. Electric buses are all about the upfront cost, but then the operating costs are *really, really low.*
0:52 not to mention thermal dynamic losses. the longer the pipe, the more heat leaks out.
I don't have the numbers in front of me, but even under the best circumstances I would bet the inefficiency would be very high.
In Kenya, a developing country, the BEV buses are actually a blessing. They have disrupted the diesel-dominated bus industry by keeping fuel costs low and in some cases the industry sells excess power to the grid through their solar busports. I think it's a huge benefit for us in Africa