NSW Electric Bus Plan

Sydney / New South Wales Transport Discussion
Linto63
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

Post by Linto63 »

tonyp wrote: ...I see a lot of comments in online discussions that indicate that many people see the battery-electric, overnight-charge bus as the best overall solution, rather than the specific solution for a certain type of operation that it actually is.
But it is all a bit academic with the larger Australian transport agencies so far going down the battery bus path and the remaining smaller ones likely to follow suit.
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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Will they also have an electric recovery truck???
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

Post by hugh45 »

As most buses in future will be electric powered, I would suggest that they have a separate registration series i.e e/o instead of m/o. Existing electric buses already on the road could be reregistered into this series.
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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For what benefit?
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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None that I can see.
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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More plate number availability? Must admit it would be confusing to have m/o1500 and e/o1500 out at the same time.
Electric buses still use motors.
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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Not as bad as having, say, m/o 1500 and MO 1500 out at the same time.

The system now recognises just MO1500 as the rego number, EO1500 would be completely different. I wonder if there are already any EOnnnn plates on issue?
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

Post by tonyp »

hugh45 wrote: Mon Dec 19, 2022 8:38 am As most buses in future will be electric powered, I would suggest that they have a separate registration series i.e e/o instead of m/o. Existing electric buses already on the road could be reregistered into this series.
They're still a motor omnibus, whichever way you look at it. Unless, you take the precedent of Sydney's first electric buses which were numbered sequentially from "1" to "26", because the DRTT motor bus people didn't want to have anything to do with them and left them to the tramway people. That's not the case today.
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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It may serve some purpose if products like AnyTrip showed the registration of the bus concerned without having to use a Filter but the bus type already provides that information but as more types come into use you cant expect travelers to be able to identify the bus by that. In some states - Queensland is is one - the fleet number and depot name are shown but not the registration which has no particular meaning in that state. The ACT and Adelaide also shows the fleet number. Melbourne is still in development and shows very little at the moment. NSW does not show anything to identify the bus concerned.
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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boronia wrote: Mon Dec 19, 2022 3:17 pm Not as bad as having, say, m/o 1500 and MO 1500 out at the same time.
True, that's pretty bad, but many in the population would be almost as confused with e/o and m/o. Maybe with MO in capitals and e/o it's very workable.
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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I don't think the average Joe would care less about what rego plate is on a bus.

It is only foamers like us that get excited about it.
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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No, I meant in identifying it for any reason. Us bus dorks have no such troubles.
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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"Did you get the number of the bus involved in the incident?"

"Yes, it was 396"
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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Route 396?
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

Post by BanksfielderIdiot823 »

Fleet Lists wrote: Mon Dec 19, 2022 4:26 pm In some states - Queensland is is one - the fleet number and depot name are shown but not the registration which has no particular meaning in that state. The ACT and Adelaide also shows the fleet number. Melbourne is still in development and shows very little at the moment. NSW does not show anything to identify the bus concerned.
Only one operator in Melbourne gives out the fleet numbers at the moment: Ventura, via the tracker on their mobile app, though again at the moment they only have electric buses out of West Heidelberg.
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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Fleet Lists wrote: Mon Dec 19, 2022 4:26 pm It may serve some purpose if products like AnyTrip showed the registration of the bus concerned without having to use a Filter but the bus type already provides that information but as more types come into use you cant expect travelers to be able to identify the bus by that. In some states - Queensland is is one - the fleet number and depot name are shown but not the registration which has no particular meaning in that state. The ACT and Adelaide also shows the fleet number. Melbourne is still in development and shows very little at the moment. NSW does not show anything to identify the bus concerned.
Wasn't the fleet number removed from display in (some) apps for NSW due to some commercial type concern (seem to recall somebody mentioning that it could be used to track how buses are used by a specific operator - although that was pre-privatisation).
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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pgt wrote: Mon Dec 19, 2022 9:23 pmWasn't the fleet number removed from display in (some) apps for NSW due to some commercial type concern (seem to recall somebody mentioning that it could be used to track how buses are used by a specific operator - although that was pre-privatisation).
A laughable excuse if true. If you don't want people to see how your buses are being used, and make inferences about what buses are allocated where, that's impossible to avoid when, even before you consider smartphone apps, there are about 5mil people in Sydney alone!

There may be potential for a passenger to 'stalk' a driver in a particular bus, but how much this actually happens outside of enthusiast's photography interests...
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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Here is a very informative series of short articles covering all you might want to know about the various alternative battery-based electric power systems for buses, trams, trains and ferries.

First, general background on different types of battery and their properties.
https://nanopower.eu/en/introduction-to ... niversity/

Second, the use of batteries in battery-trolley buses.
https://nanopower.eu/en/batteries-for-p ... rsity-2-5/

Third, the use of batteries (overnight charging or charging at stops) in battery-electric buses.
https://nanopower.eu/en/battery-for-electric-buses/

Batteries on heavy electric vehicles, including fuel cell vehicles, trams, trains, trucks and boats.
https://nanopower.eu/en/traction-batter ... icles-4-5/

Technical, but easy to read. There is also an article on second life for batteries at the end.
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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Report from the Frankfurt regional newspapaer in Germany shows not all is well in hydrogen land.

The German city of Wiesbaden is to retire its ten hydrogen-powered Caetano fuel-cell buses — a year after they were delivered — after its publicly owned transport company’s €2.3m ($2.44m) filling station broke down. The vehicles were funded by €1.95m from the EU’s Clean Hydrogen Partnership and €1.68m from the German government, while more than €2m of funding for the filling station came from the German states of Hesse (where Wiesbaden is located) and neighbouring state Rhineland-Palatinate (due to it being a joint project with the city of Mainz).
There are now question marks as to whether ESWE Verkehr will have to repay the money it received.
ESWE will therefore procure 36 new articulated diesel buses “for the years 2022 to 2024” — because “there are currently no such buses with so-called alternative drives on the market”.

The article also notes that Montpellier, France cancelled hydrogen buses earlier in 2022 after a change of regime in the municipal government discovered how much more they would cost to run than standard battery electric buses.
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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1whoknows wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 7:14 am Report from the Frankfurt regional newspapaer in Germany shows not all is well in hydrogen land.

The German city of Wiesbaden is to retire its ten hydrogen-powered Caetano fuel-cell buses — a year after they were delivered — after its publicly owned transport company’s €2.3m ($2.44m) filling station broke down. The vehicles were funded by €1.95m from the EU’s Clean Hydrogen Partnership and €1.68m from the German government, while more than €2m of funding for the filling station came from the German states of Hesse (where Wiesbaden is located) and neighbouring state Rhineland-Palatinate (due to it being a joint project with the city of Mainz).
There are now question marks as to whether ESWE Verkehr will have to repay the money it received.
ESWE will therefore procure 36 new articulated diesel buses “for the years 2022 to 2024” — because “there are currently no such buses with so-called alternative drives on the market”.

The article also notes that Montpellier, France cancelled hydrogen buses earlier in 2022 after a change of regime in the municipal government discovered how much more they would cost to run than standard battery electric buses.
Yes it will be interesting to see how hydrogen develops. The experience in Australia so far is that's it's hugely expensive, but this may change in the long term.

I should have pointed out that there are a couple more articles in the series that are worth moving forward to (via the links) for those interested. One is about solid state batteries, which have been introduced to Australian buses by the Custom Denning Element. Very good for overnight charging apparently.

https://nanopower.eu/en/will-the-future ... -be-solid/

"ESWE will therefore procure 36 new articulated diesel buses “for the years 2022 to 2024” — because “there are currently no such buses with so-called alternative drives on the market”.
What complete rubbish they're spouting. There are two solutions for high-capacity buses well-established and proven in Europe, covered in my earlier posts: the battery-trolley and opportunity charging. I suspect somebody has been chatted up by vested interests in the German motor industry. One thing I predicted with the recent trend to electrification is that the diesel motor industry in Germany and Sweden will fight to the death to hang onto their traditional market. That's one reason why Mercedes, MAN, Volvo and Scania came so late to the electric bus party - because they were hoping it wouldn't take off. Now, of course, they've realised it's a force too great to fight, so they've notched up the PR to make it sound like they're the leading edge, rather than the tail-end Charleys they actually are. Imho both Germany and Sweden have the worst-designed of the electric offerings (though not as bad as China), with cramped trench aisles and so on. Apart from the traditional trolleybus manufacturers, numerous newstarts such as Custom Denning and Ebusco have come up with better designs.

The leading initiative on bus electrification in Europe has come from their trolley bus manufacturers who have, of course, had many years experience in power electronics and were using already using battery drive before it became mainstream. Where do we think China got its ideas from? In a striking parallel to the General Motors /streetcar "conspiracy" in the USA and tram system replacements elsewhere, Germany in particular destroyed all but a couple of its once extensive trolleybus systems after the war, succumbing to political and industry pressure to change to the "wonderful" new diesel bus. France, another major motor manufacturer, did the same, destroying its tram systems as well. Now, it has come around to bite them.
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

Post by tonyp »

Linto63 wrote: Sun Dec 18, 2022 5:54 pm But it is all a bit academic with the larger Australian transport agencies so far going down the battery bus path and the remaining smaller ones likely to follow suit.
The point is that the overnight-charge 12.5 metre battery bus, like its diesel predecessor, is inadequate for high-capacity operations and will become even more inadequate than diesels because of reduced passenger capacity resulting from weight. Given that trolley, in-motion charging is unlikely to be used in Australia at present, they will have to use overnight charging supplemented with opportunity charging en route for high-capacity buses. Like the Brisbane "Metro" basically.
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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tonyp wrote: Sat Dec 17, 2022 9:57 pm
Flat roads are the enemy of battery-electric vehicles! BEV's rely on regen to extend their range and, to maximise that, you need plenty of downslopes and/or plenty of stopping, the latter being a positive for urban commuter battery buses. You also seem to be under the common misapprehension that electric buses are incompatible with hills. To the contrary, their superior ability to tackle hills is one of the significant reasons for the use of electric buses over the last century and every hill generally has a downhill, which is where you increase the range through the regen while descending.
I flunked physics but you seem to be suggesting something akin to perpetual motion. Sure a electric vehicle can recover some of the additional energy it used to go uphill but that won't increase its range, it only means that the gap in range between such a vehicle and one that can't recover energy is smaller when hills are involved. Ditto stopping.

I agree that vehicles without energy recovery are advantaged when there are no hills and stopping is rarely required. For the same reason hybrids are pointess for long distance travel in relatively flat terrain. Now if only we could produce clean hydrogen cheaply.
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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Passenger 57 wrote: Sun Dec 25, 2022 6:28 pm I flunked physics but you seem to be suggesting something akin to perpetual motion. Sure a electric vehicle can recover some of the additional energy it used to go uphill but that won't increase its range, it only means that the gap in range between such a vehicle and one that can't recover energy is smaller when hills are involved. Ditto stopping.

I agree that vehicles without energy recovery are advantaged when there are no hills and stopping is rarely required. For the same reason hybrids are pointess for long distance travel in relatively flat terrain. Now if only we could produce clean hydrogen cheaply.
In urban commuter operation, battery electric (overnight charge) buses can generally increase their range by up to 30% through regen while operating. This assists their ability to run all day without visiting a charger. The downside is that the huge weight of batteries it has to carry on board to achieve this substantially reduces the passenger capacity.
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

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tonyp wrote: Mon Dec 26, 2022 1:42 am In urban commuter operation, battery electric (overnight charge) buses can generally increase their range by up to 30% through regen while operating. This assists their ability to run all day without visiting a charger. The downside is that the huge weight of batteries it has to carry on board to achieve this substantially reduces the passenger capacity.
Relatively speaking I wouldn't dispute that but its not as if the hills and stop/starting of urban operation are increasing range which is how your earlier post can be read. It's that the regen is restoring some of the energy lost due to the needs of having to go uphill and increased frequency of acceleration. Remove those range zappers and any vehicle will be able to travel to its maximum range. Once they are present the range of all vehicles is reduced but a vehicle with regen will have its range reduced by less due to its ability to recover a proportion of the additional energy expended.
Last edited by Passenger 57 on Tue Dec 27, 2022 9:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: NSW Electric Bus Plan

Post by Swift »

I second that. Tonyp gave off the impression they need to stop and start to be viable. That implies we've invented the proverbial perpetual motion machine.
It's best to say they're most beneficial over an ICE bus in stop start conditions compared to minimal hills and stopping, but will still work ok then.
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