On Fri, 2016-06-24 at 13:02 +1000, David Lochrin wrote: > On 2016-06-24 10:13 Tom Worthington wrote: > Battery technology has reached the point where it would be feasible > > to use electric buses, without the need for overhead wires. > > I don't think battery technology is anywhere near that point. The > Transport for NSW specification (2012) states the "daily operating > duration" for all except school busses is "18 hours per day or up to > 450 km per shift. Buses must be capable of achieving this without > the need to refuel."
A LARGE part of the problem with adopting green technologies is the attitude that people often have that anything new must to be a drop-in replacement, requiring no change at all to "how we do things". Change the specification, change the attitude, change the approach and suddenly much becomes possible. For example, lots of small buses instead of fewer large ones. Electric buses are lighter than normal ones, and can also be better purpose built for metro use; a lot of internal systems (brakes etc) can be built more economically as a result. Some expensive internal systems disappear altogether - gearboxes for example. The drive chain is altogether simplified. Maintenance costs are lower. These savings across a fleet allow for vehicle substitution - one bus might only get 225km, and it only has to work for 8 hours. Maybe battery swap stations are possible; drive in, new battery pack in five minutes, drive out. Or whatever, you see the point. There are usually a lot of ways in which "The Rules" are written around particular technologies. There is the possibly apocryphal story of the chap that built an electric car and had to bolt a standards-conforming exhaust pipe onto it to get it registered... Regards, K. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Karl Auer ([email protected]) http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer http://twitter.com/kauer389 GPG fingerprint: E00D 64ED 9C6A 8605 21E0 0ED0 EE64 2BEE CBCB C38B Old fingerprint: 3C41 82BE A9E7 99A1 B931 5AE7 7638 0147 2C3C 2AC4 _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
