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Electric school buses are a breath of fresh air for children | Nearly $1B in federal funding could help clean up the unequal health impacts of diesel pollution. (grist.org)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Electric school buses are a breath of fresh air for children | Nearly $1B in federal funding could help clean up the unequal health impacts of diesel pollution.::Nearly $1B in federal funding will help decarbonize transportation and clean up some of the unequal health impacts of diesel pollution

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You can generate a lot of heat with fuel-based heaters. Many buses already use these.

Makes sense to have an aux fuel heat source for EV buses that may deal with cold climate a few weeks out of the year.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Buses will have fairly large batteries (Bird does 150kWh). The percentage of the battery needed for heat goes down as size goes up because the interior size is relatively negligible in how much added heating capacity is needed to keep the bus warm.

But yes, probably wouldn't be too crazy to throw on a propane heater in especially cold climates.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

3 kids in a full size bus near the end of its rural route in sub-zero conditions. Buses aren’t insulated. An EV failure is going to be a problem. Considering how cheap those diesel heaters are it would be a liability concern to not have them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy14osti/60068.pdf

"Similarly to route duration, doubling the route distance to reflect daily operating distances, it is found that on average school buses travel 73.46 miles, with a 99.7% cutoff on driving distance of 154.46 miles."

That's double distance to cover both before and after school; they have a pause in the middle of the day to charge up again. There are battery buses on the market right now that do 155 miles, which is double all but 0.3% of routes out there. It also takes about an order of magnitude more power to run a motor for an EV than it does to run the heaters. If you get stuck in the snow in an EV at 50% charge, you can likely make it there through the night with the heater running.

The cold is a complete non-issue for this use case.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Buses aren’t insulated.

Why. I mean if the weather is usually fine sure but if you're living on the arctic circle they better be insulated.