
Shenzhen Electrifies Entire Public Transit Bus Fleet - Element_
https://electrek.co/2017/12/28/shenzhen-electrifies-entire-public-transit-fleet-electric-buses/
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contingencies
Living in Shenzhen, it feels like probably 80% of the taxis are electric
already. Due to government subsidy the blue electric BYD cabs are more
spacious, cheaper (no 2元 fuel surcharge), newer and cleaner than the older red
cabs, which are generally clunky dirty squashed VWs. However, the drivers pay
more to buy them even with subsidy, and you need a conventional ICE vehicle to
get out to the factories in Dongguan, or to cross the border to Hong Kong.

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jsemrau
Shenzen / Hong Kong will be the next Silicon Valley.

~~~
IIAOPSW
Hong Kong maybe. The great firewall is really the party shooting itself in the
foot.

~~~
adrianN
The Chinese market is big enough to build very successful companies that never
need to cross the firewall to provide their services.

~~~
IIAOPSW
The Chinese market has to deal with obnoxious barriers to starting a business
and competition from government backed giants (tencent, alibaba). So long as
the party shoots itself in the foot it will never replicate Silicon Valley.

~~~
contingencies
Second time mainland China business founder here - foreigner. As everywhere
there are barriers. However, I would say that in China it is not that hard to
get going all told. While foreigners cannot really sole trade and there remain
linguistic and cultural barriers, low initial capital requirements, a non-
litigious environment, relatively relaxed licensing and a reasonably
transparent and predictable visa system are big pluses versus the US. These
days, the VC environment is also solid.

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gumby
Why is the US not investing in these kinds of infrastructure build outs? I’m
not trying to start a flame war, I’m generally curious.

I understand the path dependence that, for example, made the US adopt mobile
phones much later than everybody else (a modern and high quality wire plant
that wasn’t yet amortized). Things like that make things like train networks
hard to build too.

But bus fleets turn over relatively quickly and incrementally as well. What’s
the barrier? The announced deployments all seem like small beer.

~~~
volgo
The U.S. legislative system has to cater to everyone's interests. Which is not
bad per se, but when it comes to something like this, new environmental laws
will always hollow out an entire industry. No matter what new enforcement they
try to enact, there'll always be someone powerful lobbying against it.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>The U.S. legislative system has to cater to everyone's interests.

I'd argue that clean air and water _are_ in everyone's interest.

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sgarman
Maybe their actual bests interests but not what they THINK their best
interests are.

~~~
jjcc
Agree. Not limit to the energy policy. US politicians are more often doing
serious but not quite visible damage to long term interests. Just most modern
US citizen are not aware of. There are some exceptions like Taleb Nassim but
the voices never go through main stream

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rektide
Talk about all the buses you want. What I really really want to hear about is
the chargers that make it possible. Give me maximum MW rates and rates for how
much each station can crank out in total.

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woodandsteel
The article says, "The city has built 8,000 charge points at 510 bus charging
stations in order to be able to charge roughly half the fleet at any given
time"

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olingern
I feel like the US will continue to fall behind the curve until it's one day
too late to be looked at as what other countries aspire to.

Oh, wait. No one aspires to be us anymore.

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userbinator
Since transit buses are on fixed routes, I wonder why they didn't go with
trolleybuses instead - no expensive batteries to replace (trolleybuses do have
vestigial batteries, but they're much smaller and used for backup), thus
better power-to-weight ratio, no need to wait for charging, and otherwise just
as if not more environmentally friendly. When I was in Beijing, there were
plenty of those.

(I know the ultimate source of power may be coal or oil, but it seems to me
that even then, going directly from a power plant to the motor would be more
efficient than an intermediate charging/discharging step.)

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gumby
By trolley bus do you mean what are also called “trackless trolleys” — busses
with tires but no fuel storage that get power from an overhead line?

I’ve presumed that the infrastructure buildout and lack of flexibility make
the TCO generally not worth it. In addition, if you need a mix you may get an
economy of scale on one set of gear (maintenance, parts, flexibility etc —
like a single-model-of-aircraft airline).

But this is speculation on my part

~~~
angled
Two other reasons may be aesthetics, and the environment - Beijing gets
sandstorms but it doesn't get typhoons. Per CLP (just across the border in
Hong Kong):

> More than 30% of CLP’s transmission network consists of overhead lines.
> There are more than 700 400kV transmission towers that form the backbone of
> its supply system. Overhead lines are exposed and susceptible to the
> influence of weather and the external environment. If a pylon is destroyed
> by strong winds or collapses because of a landslip, it will take several
> months to be back in order.

[https://www.clp.com.hk/en/about-clp-site/corporate-
informati...](https://www.clp.com.hk/en/about-clp-site/corporate-information-
site/scheme-of-control-site/Documents/4.1%20CLP%20Information%20Kit.pdf)

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melling
The low-speed maglevs being built in China seem a little more interesting.

[https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/construction-low-speed-
magl...](https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/construction-low-speed-maglev-train-
systems-booming-china)

Getting people from point A to B faster on mass transit will get them out of
cars and cabs.

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seanmcdirmid
The Changsha airport-train station maglev link is quite convenient, and ya,
definitely saves a cab trip.

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helm33
Denver bought a bunch of electric busses from BYD for service on the 16th
street mall. My understanding is BYD offered a 12 year warranty on the
batteries, in order to make the economics work.

~~~
dwyerm
I noticed RTD had new buses last time I was there. I recall that the original
TransTeq EcoMark buses were very progressive for their time. If I remember the
story correctly, RTD couldn't find a company that built the right bus for
them, so they went off and more or less built their own. Then, over the next
decade and a half, I began to see their distinctive low floors and warty roofs
in cities and airports all over the nation.

I proud of my little city for leading the way, but I'm a little sad to see
that TransTeq seems to have disappeared. For a while, it seemed like their
ideas were taking over the world. But at least the technology advanced
overall.

Anyway, my favorite part about the new BYD buses on the Mall is their noise.
They have a speaker on the front that 'growls' so that the otherwise-quiet
buses have a harder time sneaking up on pedestrians. New solutions to new
problems!

~~~
helm33
Funny you should mention the noise. I took a tour of their charging facility,
and the fleet manager noted the busses were originally too quiet. They went to
the toy store, bought some toy trucks and rigged that growling solution from
the truck noise makers.

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olivermarks
This is really impressive, I've been very skeptical of heavy payload
capability and range for electric vehicles until now. Will be interesting to
see how well they perform, how the charging infrastructure works and battery
life

~~~
trhway
> very skeptical of heavy payload capability and range for electric vehicles

heavy usually means "not that fast" \- so less of the speed-squared drug (at
25miles/hour i remember some guys did double the range, like 400miles+, on a
Tesla S) and also the weight of the battery becomes less of a factor on the
background of the whole vehicle and cargo weight.

~~~
Gibbon1
Two things to note about heavy vehicles.

Often the power plant size is less than you would expect. Partly because drag
is proportional to frontal area and goes up with the square of the vehicle
size. While load is proportional to volume, goes up with the cube. That points
to passenger cars being the worst case scenario, not trucks and buses.

Second, batteries are a tech that just scales lineally. Double the capacity of
a battery pack? Double the weight, volume, and cost. Consider with a bus the
metric isn't battery size per bus, it's battery size per passenger.

Add for electrified heavy equipment like tractors, etc. The extra weight of
the battery is a bonus not a negative. You need weight to get traction not HP.

~~~
woodandsteel
Buses don't need huge batteries for their size. A typical city bus goes only
about 100 miles a day, they do a ton of regenerative breaking, and they can
charge at stops and also they tend to sit in the terminal several times a day
while the driver takes a break after each circuit.

Electric trash collection trucks are even better. That's because they do so
much regenerative breaking.

~~~
goldenkey
Regenerative braking doesn't do much for someone who already throttles
properly. Garbage trucks dont have to drive in traffic. They dont get free
energy for regen breaking..its just a recoup for bad driving conditions.

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adrianN
Were I live buses do drive in traffic.

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goldenkey
Yes, buses do. But not garbage trucks...Please read my post again - I never
referred to buses, only garbage trucks.

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pjc50
They're turning up in Edinburgh too:
[https://lothianbuses.co.uk/news/article/Lothian-introduce-
th...](https://lothianbuses.co.uk/news/article/Lothian-introduce-the-first-
all-electric-buses-to-Edinburgh)

I suspect a lot of bus services around the world with emissions targets are
phasing them in right now.

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nwah1
Is the grid in Shenzhen mostly coal-powered?

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andschwa
Coal provided electricity to power electric powers ends up _still_ being
cleaner than ICEs, which are just about the worst in efficiency or cleanliness
as you can get.

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nwah1
Coal releases lead, radon, and other toxic pollutants into the environment.

And you haven't supported the assertion that coal-powered EVs emit less CO2,
and it contradicts what I've generally heard elsewhere.

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ecpottinger
Do the math instead of listening to people who resist change.

You are right about the extra stuff that comes with coal power, but you will
find with a good modern coal plant, transmission losses, and battery/electric
motor loss still puts less CO2 in the air that gasoline cars per mile
travelled.

~~~
rayiner
[https://www.citylab.com/environment/2015/06/where-
electric-v...](https://www.citylab.com/environment/2015/06/where-electric-
vehicles-actually-cause-more-pollution-than-gas-cars/397136/)

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taobility
That will be Tesla's next big announcement

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jdavis703
Once they have the truck platform, won't it be easy to swap out the trailer
for a passenger cabin?

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ClassyJacket
I doubt it - buses typically have the driver in the same compartment as the
passengers, and are much lower to the ground than the trailer.

