The Slow Death of the Internal Combustion Engine

[redpoint5]

Put a smaller battery then. 150 miles range should cover the unexpected or very cold days.

We'd still need gassers for bussing kids to competitions in far away cities.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Put a smaller battery then. 150 miles range should cover the unexpected or very cold days.

We'd still need gassers for bussing kids to competitions in far away cities.

The 160 kWh battery is good for 100 miles. That configuration is about $120,000 more than a diesel bus with a standard diesel drivetrain. The electric buses save money in the long run but the break even is about 9 years. The average school district is strapped for cash and can't afford to pay the extra money up front.

Chicken or the egg problem.

[hayden55]

Thinking on it now I honestly think the next 25 years will shift towards hybrids and not EVs. Still quite a bit too spendy over the base hybrid models to save a couple bucks a month and have to deal with owning an EV plus the winter capacity loss in the rust belt, and the new Hybrids are just as clean as the EVs from what I've seen or cleaner if you're given area mostly uses coal for power generation. PHEV could go somewhere. But I really cannot justify the cost of a phev over a standard hybrid, and besides the cool factory of it I think the majority of the public will fill the same way after the novelty wears off. Especially now that a lot of these expensive models are finding their sales dropping, and people aren't going out to buy new cars like they used to even though you can basically mortgage a car now for ten years. lol At least until battery prices drop. I think the Ioniq PHEV is only 15-20% more and will save the average driver $100/yr that a little sad math. But MAN... the EV's have horrible depreciation. Thats a pretty bad sign of consumer adoption rates. (Besides Tesla since its like the iPhone of Cars right now. Gotta get ya one and post it on the gram if you cool. )

[RedDevil]

EV depreciation is fueled by doubts of battery longevity. But that will change dramatically if they get better.
Musk said the current packs last for 300,000 to 500,000 miles but next year they'll build batteries that last a million miles. Those won't depreciate in a hurry.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by hayden55

Thinking on it now I honestly think the next 25 years will shift towards hybrids and not EVs.

The auto industry agrees with you. The biggest thing over the next 10 or so years will be 48V mild hybrid systems. Expect to see them as standard fitment.

Bloomberg is predicting EVs will be 55% of cars sales in 2040.

https://about.bnef.com/electric-vehicle-outlook/

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by hayden55

Thinking on it now I honestly think the next 25 years will shift towards hybrids and not EVs. Still quite a bit too spendy over the base hybrid models to save a couple bucks a month

Agreed. Faster rates of EV adoption rely on costs to come down, which is not a certainty. It would be a mistake to look back on 20 years of lithium ion prices getting cut in half every 5 years (or whatever that number is) and expect that trend to follow indefinitely. The same logic was applied to transistor sizes, and look at us now. They're about as small as they're going to get for the foreseeable future. Our iPhones might grow wings, but they probably won't get substantially better for a long time.

Hybrids and plug-in hybrids have an important role to play in the transition; perhaps even a dominant role.

The only thing that makes me reconsider this is that most families have multiple cars, and 1 of those could easily be an EV.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

The only thing that makes me reconsider this is that most families have multiple cars, and 1 of those could easily be an EV.

One car could be an EV and every car could be a hybrid. We are at the point that the gas savings from a hybrid easily pay for the minimal extra cost.

[Taylor95]

I wonder if commercial vehicles could be retrofitted with parts that would make them a hybrid.

I keep getting ads for this product

https://orbisdriven.com/

It intrigues me, though it is like 9k for the parts.

[Xist]

Most of us preferred Blue Birds to Thomas buses. My relatively-new Thomas bus periodically failed inspection and they had me drive a much older Blue Bird. Our training buses were thirty year-old Blue Birds.

When I searched for Blue Bird hybrid bus I only found reports of a full electric:

Blue Bird’s all-new Type C bus features up to 100 miles of electric range, with a full charge time of under 8 hours by utilizing a Type 2 charger and a battery capacity of 150kWh.

https://www.blue-bird.com/about-us/p...apt-conference

This says it would cost $350,000.

I cannot find any figures for street prices for school buses. Fifteen years ago I understood that they cost $100,000. I found an article about some unemployed ski instructor complaining that the district wanted to spend $40,000 extra for a bus with wifi (despite being corrected repeatedly.

They said it actually cost $1,800, plus $110 a month. So, it would absolutely cost an extra $40,000--over twenty-nine years.

They said the district wanted to purchase two buses for an average of $110,000, but they did not really specify features.

I do not think that any of my routes exceeded a hundred miles a day and they usually sat from 0830 to 1300, so a sixty-mile range should have been more than adequate.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by Taylor95

I wonder if commercial vehicles could be retrofitted with parts that would make them a hybrid.

I keep getting ads for this product

https://orbisdriven.com/

It intrigues me, though it is like 9k for the parts.

XL hybrids has an aftermarket system for vans, trucks, and cutaways. Light and medium duty (Class 1-6.) There is not reason the system couldn't be scaled up for heavy duty trucks. They replace the pillow block with an electric motor and the controller gets commands from the OBDII.

https://www.xlfleet.com/content/vehicles/