There Might Be A Glimmer Of Hope For Harley-Davidson

Michael Ballaban
Yesterday 10:20am
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3rd Gear: Electric Buses Will Save The World

Everyone thought that it would be electric cars that saved the world, but no. It’s going to be electric buses instead. The things are becoming so popular, in fact, that they’re beginning to put a small-but-significant dent in global oil consumption. And it’s in large part due to China, naturally. From Bloomberg:

The numbers are staggering. China had about 99 percent of the 385,000 electric buses on the roads worldwide in 2017, accounting for 17 percent of the country’s entire fleet. Every five weeks, Chinese cities add 9,500 of the zero-emissions transporters—the equivalent of London’s entire working fleet, according Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

All this is starting to make an observable reduction in fuel demand. And because they consume 30 times more fuel than average sized cars, their impact on energy use so far has become much greater than the than the passenger sedans produced companies from Tesla Inc. to Toyota Motor Corp.

Electric motors make a huge amount of sense for city buses. Not only do city buses constantly start and stop, which is ideal for the way electric motors work, but they’re also silent and don’t emit any noxious fumes in confined city quarters like diesels normally do. Electricity is also a hell of a lot cheaper than diesel, making them a smart investment for budget-conscious municipalities. And since buses spend a lot of time sitting in yards overnight when there’s less demand, there’s plenty of time to charge. Plus, buses don’t normally drive thousands of miles a day, so range is less of a concern. But even if range was a concern, a bus is sort of the ideal vehicle to mollify the problem. Most vehicles designed for electric propulsion from the ground up line their floors with batteries. More floor equals more batteries, and buses that are huge and long have tons of space for energy storage.

In short, what was once a silly idea is instead extremely brilliant, and will save us all.

Maybe all of the out-of-work oil workers can become bus drivers.