Smith Electric Vehicles has teamed with Trans Tech Bus to roll out a 42-passenger, 26,000lb electric bus, called the Newton eTrans, which it hopes will change the way children get to school every morning.
"Speed and predictability of route is important," Bryan Hansel, CEO of Smith Electric Vehicles, told us. "School buses tend to have very dedicated routes. You know the exact distance that you drive every day, so you don't have to have any concerns about range anxiety."
The duty cycle of a school bus could be well-suited to electrification. The Newton eTrans is expected to go into production in the second quarter of 2012. (Source: Smith Electric Vehicles)
Indeed, Smith is tuned into the idea of route predictability, so much so that the company offers customers a graduated series of lithium-ion battery sizes. Starting at 40kWh, its battery sizes increase in 20kWh increments, up to a maximum of 120kWh. The top-level bus, which carries about 3,000lb of batteries onboard, has a range of about 120 miles, and employs a permanent magnet motor with 150kW of peak power.
Smith's battery cells, configured like saddlebags across the bus's center frame rails, use a lithium iron phosphate chemistry, and are built by A123 Systems. Although the battery packs employ sensors to monitor cell temperatures, they have no active cooling system. If the battery management system "sees" elevated temperatures in any of the cells, it de-powers that part of the pack (although the company said that has never been necessary).
In that respect, electric buses have an advantage over small electric cars that accelerate quickly, Hansel said.
"When you have a smaller battery and need to accelerate more quickly, that's when you need active cooling," he told us. "You tend to get heating because you are trying to draw energy out of a small number of cells very quickly, whereas we have very large batteries, and we pull very little energy out of them."
To build the bus, Smith teamed with Trans Tech Bus. Smith builds the power chassis for the Newton eTrans, while Trans Tech does the body, structural design, and the interior. The two companies believe that the eTrans is the first all-electric school bus.
It seems to me that the electric bus would also be an excellent place to put solar panels (on the roof). You should be able to get at least 90 watts of panels on the roof to charge the battery with during daylight hours. Even if you lay them flat, could extend the range of the bus by several miles. Just a thought.
Innovation must understand the need and should not try to embed the soultion in it. I think this project has really understood the need. There are always going to be electrification applications that fit nicely in the 100-mile duty cycle," Hansel said. "School buses are one of those applications." This proves that. Good work
Aside from the additional loads on the grid there is a huge problem with electric school bus use, at least in my city, which is that nobody will be able to service them. That will probably mean also that there will be a union electrician required to plug them in for recharging every evening. So the reduced cost of powering the buses will be offset by the much increased costs of every other aspect of owning them. One more question is how would these buses be heated? Electric heat is a poor choice for any application at any time, and fueled heaters would sort of reduce the environmental savings a bit. About the only problem that they would solve would be the range problem.
School bus range is the least of many school boards' problems these days. Because of falling tax revenues, how far their money will go is. Investing in electric buses is committing to a very long payback. The article says such buses will cost "considerably more" than diesel-fueled buses. This is exactly what will be looked at when it comes to replacing fleets. When school districts by the hundreds are cutting back on essentials such as teachers and upgraded textbooks, going green will not be on their agenda. Sorry. As much as this is to be desired, this isn't the time it will happen in many areas. It will be a matter of the haves and have nots. Those schools who have the revenue will get; those who do not will have to make do with what they got.
bdcst, you raise good points about the viability of this tchnology in rural communities. Here's another potential problem: Some rural communities have multiple children who live as many as ten miles from the school. If you add up the mileage for all the morning pick-ups, and then realize that the bus has to be recharged for all the afternoon drop-offs, the range may not be enough.
Electric companies will be anxious to get their power grid loaded and used over night. It would be great if the electric companies could control the time and sequence of overnight charging to help even out grid load. There's an over abundance of electricity available on the grid, starting at about 10:00 at night and ending around 7:00 in the morning.
The comment about a 13 ton school bus needing less surge to get started than a small electric car is taxing my intelligence. A shcool bus driver presses the pedal as hard if not harder than a car driver to get started. Its battery may be larger, but it's still one heck of a load to get going, especially when you've got 40 passengers on board.
These busses sound good, however they only make any sense in dense city environments where other electric transportation (communter trains, etc.) are already there or would be less expensive to setup and install.
These EVs place a huge (more than several houses) load on the electric grid when they re-charge (if they are to be re-charged in one 'night'). Has anyone looked at the tremendous strain a couple of hundred of these would put on electric infrastructure
Refueling a conventional bus takes an hour. Refueling an EV of this size takes all night and the batteries may require cooling if it is to be recharged in one 'shift'.
@bdcst: Your point about the range issue for rural communities is real. I think the key takeaway with that very real reminder is that even with the very benefits the EV buses can deliver, they (and alternative vehicle technology in general) is not a use case for every situation. Rural communities have different circumstances to deal with than an urban school system. Therefore, the backup plans and equipment they'd have to put in place to support a transition to an EV bus fleet would shoot the ROI right in the foot, hence not a sound use case. That said, I do think this has great potential and just because it isn't a fit for some doesn't mean it wouldn't be great to see pockets of adoption out there.
I agree ith you, Beth. One newspaper cited a 60% cost difference between this and a diesel model. If that's true, it would be very hard to compensate for it.
Good point, Bdcst. Those would be relatively infrequent events, but they do happen inevitably. So instead of just snow days, the school system would have to allow for power-out-last-night days. I have two kids who live in separate rural areas, and power outages due to storms are much more frequent in rural areas than they are in the city.
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