Electric Bus Travels 1,101 Miles on Single Charge

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monkeymagick

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Developed by California-based Proterra, the Catalyst E2 Max set a new record for distance traveled of 1,101.2 miles on single charge for an electric bus. Some are suggesting that this can be a "break through moment" for electric vehicles and public transportation in overcoming "range anxiety."

Check out the journey.

Proterra, the leading innovator in heavy-duty electric transportation, set a world record for driving the longest distance ever traveled by an electric vehicle on a single charge at the Navistar Proving Grounds in New Carlisle, Indiana. Proterra’s 40-foot Catalyst E2 max traveled 1,101.2 miles this month with 660 kWh of energy storage capacity.
 
hahaha, not sure how driving around in a city bus full of batteries relates to range anxiety.
 
Wait..

So a vehicle that is well.. literally the size of a bus, that has 11 times the capacity of a tesla model s 60, manages to get 1,100 miles? Which is.. only 5x the range of that model s. It's almost as if when you have no reason to give a shit how much a vehicle weighs or it's dimensions since this isn't a personal vehicle or something that needs to carry 40,000 pounds long distance, you can just keep cramming thousands of pounds of batteries into the thing.
 
Quartz-1 said:
Was the bus laden (with simulated passengers and their bags) or unladen?
Click to expand...

Great question, and one that is not answered in the video/article. My guess is unladen.

However, I believe the idea is to use these buses around a city so I can't imagine they would be travelling 1000+ miles on a daily basis. I think the point of the video is just to show the overall increase in range of these vehicles which makes them more viable as progress is made.
 
Quartz-1 said:
Was the bus laden (with simulated passengers and their bags) or unladen?
Click to expand...


Common sense would suggest that instead of them lying to themselves and or potential customers / investors that they would have had some sorta of simulated load. But in this day and age of "fake news" who really knows. I'm going to assume that it might been a dry weight run.

What is really cool about this is self-driving Semi's that are all electric with a 1,000+ mile range. The importance of this is that this will help to keep costs down on food and goods.
 
Bus was empty and going like 20mph top speed. They were just trying to see what kind of crazy range they could get.

I do wonder if they drove it "normal" and with a some passengers if it could at least get half that, which is honestly still pretty good range for a city bus.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Common sense would suggest that instead of them lying to themselves and or potential customers / investors that they would have had some sorta of simulated load. But in this day and age of "fake news" who really knows. I'm going to assume that it might been a dry weight run.

What is really cool about this is self-driving Semi's that are all electric with a 1,000+ mile range. The importance of this is that this will help to keep costs down on food and goods.
Click to expand...

However the bus had more room for batteries, and does not have to haul a load even close to what most semi's do. Tesla's truck is about that battery size and only gets 2-300 miles, with 1,200kWh required for 600ish miles, to do 1,100 miles on a single charge would need a huge battery for a loaded truck.
 
SixFootDuo said:
The importance of this is that this will help to keep costs down on food and goods.
Click to expand...
And put a trucker out of work.

If your average trucker makes $187,000 a year.;) it's more like 40k
And drives 125,000 miles a year hauling palets of 8 oz Tropicana Orange Juice sippy cups that retail for 89¢ ( or $1.89 at your local convenience store ), are you really going to notice the cost.
 
I wonder how much would it do in the real world. not on a controlled scenario with a semi constant speed, empty and not making any stops
 
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0neTwo said:
Bus was empty and going like 20mph top speed. They were just trying to see what kind of crazy range they could get.

I do wonder if they drove it "normal" and with a some passengers if it could at least get half that, which is honestly still pretty good range for a city bus.
Click to expand...

My first thought exactly, looks like they're driving it around a test loop at what I'm sure is a very fixed speed. We need to use something like the EPA test cycle for city/highway, but looped. Instead of counting the MPG they just count the number of loop iterations that can be done. Then we can have a city range, highway range, and combined range.
 
l'm sure they measured out some realistic distances between bus stops so they can simulate stopping and starting over and over again right? stop lights, heavy traffic...? I'm sure they kept the inside cool for riders with some AC? right? So... uhh... yeah.
 
SixFootDuo said:
What is really cool about this is self-driving Semi's that are all electric with a 1,000+ mile range. The importance of this is that this will help to keep costs down on food and goods.
Click to expand...

Don't you mean keep profits high? Let's not pretend for an instant that being able to replace all truck drivers will lower the retail price of anything by even a single penny.

Our financial markets, in their infinite wisdom, determined years ago that the best way forward was greed to the extreme, hoarding every penny they can under the guise of capitalism while forgetting the core principles of the very same economic system that brought about our rise in the first place. Forget the notions that investment, reasonable wages, and taking care of the very workforce that you expect to buy your products are the pillars of true economic growth in a capitalist society. All they worry about today is trying to meet investors unrealistic expectations of ever increasing earnings along with huge, largely unearned, executive salaries and, of course, massive bonuses even if the company isn't doing so great. Oh and don't forget the golden parachutes that they get even if they do a terrible job.
 
It's enough to get it done.

Say a bus is on the road for 18 hours. And it averages, over the course of a whole day, starting, stopping, picking up and dropping off fares, that it's doing 30 mph. That's 540 miles. I doubt that the range is going to be less the half in a work cycle compared to a hyper-miling run. Especially since it should have regenerative braking.

Drive back to the garage and hook it on a high voltage circuit for 8 hours, good to go the next day.

Turns out... I did some poking before I finished my post.

https://www.quora.com/How-many-miles-does-an-average-London-bus-drive-every-year - London's buses drive on average of 35k miles per year. Or 96 only miles a day.

http://winnipegtransit.com/en/about-us/interestingtransitfacts/ - 85 miles a day average per bus.

http://www.transitchicago.com/about/facts.aspx - ~90 miles per bus per day.

So really, this sucker's overkill. They could do DC to NY runs with this. NY to Chicago. LA to SF. LA to LV.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Common sense would suggest that instead of them lying to themselves and or potential customers / investors that they would have had some sorta of simulated load. But in this day and age of "fake news" who really knows. I'm going to assume that it might been a dry weight run...
Click to expand...

Not quite sure you understand how business works in terms of getting interest/funding. You need to focus on doing something that gains headlines first, and worry about practical application later. The fact that this feat was achieved under controlled conditions on a test track without divulging other pertinent data is just a big "HEY, LOOK AT ME!" and not representative of anything practical. Weight, starting, stopping, traffic, turning, hills, potholes, and other factors are all going to play a role in how much use you get out of the battery.

I applaud them for trying, but IMO battery tech still has a long way to go before this becomes useful at scale. Things like this do accomplish the goal of generating interest, showing things that are possible, and securing that next round of funding to take it to the next level. This run generated headlines and got people to click so mission accomplished.
 
Quartz-1 said:
Was the bus laden (with simulated passengers and their bags) or unladen?
Click to expand...
That was my first thought too.
Also, how much actual start/stop driving? Or was it all highway? Or was it the usual controlled test track environment? Speeds driven, etc. They would all have huge impacts.
 
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SixFootDuo said:
Common sense would suggest that instead of them lying to themselves and or potential customers / investors that they would have had some sorta of simulated load. But in this day and age of "fake news" who really knows. I'm going to assume that it might been a dry weight run.

What is really cool about this is self-driving Semi's that are all electric with a 1,000+ mile range. The importance of this is that this will help to keep costs down on food and goods.
Click to expand...

Until the terrorists find out that in order to cripple most countries all they have to do is take down the electrical grid.

Then, instead of just mostly convenience things being taken down for the most part, a large majority of transportation is taken down as well.

At least with fossil fuels we can still have transportation until the electrical grid comes back online.
 
Jim Kim said:
And put a trucker out of work.

If your average trucker makes $187,000 a year.;) it's more like 40k
And drives 125,000 miles a year hauling palets of 8 oz Tropicana Orange Juice sippy cups that retail for 89¢ ( or $1.89 at your local convenience store ), are you really going to notice the cost.
Click to expand...

If we are talking fully autonomous, it has alot more to do with how much work is done for the cost, which would be zero after buying. With all the new laws on driving time and them wanting to reduce it even more, and the UK is even less than the US. However a truck like this would drive 24/7, no bathroom or sleeping breaks, no time off etc etc. Transportation efficiency would probably go way up as part of that and you don't pay it anything.

cyclone3d said:
Until the terrorists find out that in order to cripple most countries all they have to do is take down the electrical grid.

Then, instead of just mostly convenience things being taken down for the most part, a large majority of transportation is taken down as well.

At least with fossil fuels we can still have transportation until the electrical grid comes back online.
Click to expand...

However the "electrical grid" is not a single place to target, with sub stations all over the place. The same can be said for oil/gas, all they have to do it find transport line, of which there are FAR fewer than electrical lines and blow it up, with serious secondary explosions and fire and months to repair, while most electrical power stuff can be replaced in a day. Oil sub stations or processing plants could take years to replace.
 
BlueFireIce said:
If we are talking fully autonomous, it has alot more to do with how much work is done for the cost, which would be zero after buying. With all the new laws on driving time and them wanting to reduce it even more, and the UK is even less than the US. However a truck like this would drive 24/7, no bathroom or sleeping breaks, no time off etc etc. Transportation efficiency would probably go way up as part of that and you don't pay it anything.



However the "electrical grid" is not a single place to target, with sub stations all over the place. The same can be said for oil/gas, all they have to do it find transport line, of which there are FAR fewer than electrical lines and blow it up, with serious secondary explosions and fire and months to repair, while most electrical power stuff can be replaced in a day. Oil sub stations or processing plants could take years to replace.
Click to expand...

Sub stations would be super easy to target. When was the last time you saw a sub station with anything but a chain link fence and maybe some barbed wire to keep people out?

And if you go all electrical, and a coordinated attack happens that takes out the majority of electricity, how are you going to have enough electricity to power all the electric vehicles needed to transport the new parts to install them?

Can't have all your eggs in one basket. If we are forced to go all electric, bad, bad things could happen very easily.

At least there are oil reserves if stuff gets taken out. If all electric and the majority of electric gets taken out, we would be screwed so much worse and for longer.
 
Had a mental image of it holding 3 passengers, the rest of it is for the battery.
 
My daily driver diesel car gets 50 mpg. That's over 800 miles per tank. It takes about 5 minutes to refill another 800 miles.
 
As someone that drives buses for a living, here is my fare on the matter:

The weight of a full load of passengers vs. the weight of an empty coach is quite unbalanced. Our 35' coaches weigh a good 13+ tons empty, and get about 6 MPG when road conditions/temperature are ideal (some babying required), and 5 MPG when they aren't. Put a full load of people on board, and you'll add about 3 tons to that weight and the mileage drops by a hair. A bus like this might lose 50 miles of range, that's how little difference there is. We drive mostly rural transit, so our shortest "city" bus does 160 miles/day, and the longest over 200, a setup like this would mean that we could use an electric bus at our satellite "base" (it's a U-store-it lot) and then charge it after its weekly swap out. As for charging time, don't think of electric car plug in charging, think on route overhead platform fast charging. That shit is quick, and, sadly, I doubt a home power line will support that kind of amperage.

As a fun bonus, I can't say for sure it was this company (I think it was), but we were housing an electric demo bus in our maintenance shop while they were working on it and the batteries spontaneously caught fire. Nothing like watching red flames rocketing out the side of that sucker while they were blasting it with extinguishers and dragging it out of the building. Was mostly saved, but damn did that end our bid to buy one!
 
Some are suggesting that this can be a "break through moment" for electric vehicles and public transportation in overcoming "range anxiety."
Click to expand...
Nope... the know-it-alls of [H] will still find a way to bitch about all the times they drove cross country and fuck all if they have to stop anywhere for any length of time!
 
So how much does a wet 10 to 15L i6 Turbo Diesel weigh? And it's HD 4-10 speed transmission? And it's tandem differentials? And it's 100-400 gallons of fuel? I mean, yea, batteries can get heavy but the motors and simple 2 speed transmissions aren't (compared to the diesel alternative).

I'm not being sarcastic - I want to know. Whole system vs whole system. Can't just say 'well, batteries are heavy' without looking at the whole picture, right?
 
I was wondering about spent batteries/power cells. What will be done with the millions then billions of power cells once their life span has expired? Bury them all at WIPP or will they be recyclable?
 
While an impressive feat, this isn't how its done. Latest trend is to put just enough battery on the bus to get it from one end of the line to the other with a slight reserve, and then have the bus quick charge while on layover at the end of the line using a roof mounted plug in system. Like so:



I've driven transit busses before (the turn signals are on the floor, say what?), and usually I would pull somewhere around 250 miles per 8 hour shift, all city driving on city streets. Some busses may have as many as 3 different drivers throughout the day, and be on the route for 20 hours straight or more. So 1100+ mile range might be enough for a days work, remember, you only got about 4 hours or less remaining hours in the day (or night) to charge it back up to full for the next day, as well as other cleaning and care that needs to be done. Yeah, that's a tight margin.
 
cyclone3d said:
Sub stations would be super easy to target. When was the last time you saw a sub station with anything but a chain link fence and maybe some barbed wire to keep people out?

And if you go all electrical, and a coordinated attack happens that takes out the majority of electricity, how are you going to have enough electricity to power all the electric vehicles needed to transport the new parts to install them?

Can't have all your eggs in one basket. If we are forced to go all electric, bad, bad things could happen very easily.

At least there are oil reserves if stuff gets taken out. If all electric and the majority of electric gets taken out, we would be screwed so much worse and for longer.
Click to expand...

As someone who has worked oil and gas for 13 years, if you think sub stations and pipeline is guarded, you are mistaken, they are all protected the same, most don't even have fences. And far less to target vs electrical so this coordinated attack would be easier for oil and gas than electrical. You have generation and sub stations all over the place, in other words, electrical is no bigger a target than oil/gas.
 
Since it has a 660kWh battery pack, and the AC unit pulls 10kW, that means that if the bus were stationary, it would run for 66 hours? I know, that's making some big assumptions but it's the basic gist of it right?
 
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