The EU aims to phase out sales of diesel busses by 2030 but might achieve that several years early, possibly even eliminating diesel from the entire 200K fleet of city busses by that same year.
Absolutely unreal, my city just bought 100 new diesel buses. These were desperately needed and the electric option was discussed but way too expensive.
Basically every city in the country is doing everything they can to buy as much as they can before the ban.
Does anyone have a good article/vid behind the BYD story? I’ve only heard of them this year and now they’re everywhere (outselling many makers here in Brazil too).
Warren Buffet rates the CEO as the second best CEO in the world (after Jeff Bezos) and invested in 2008:
>BYD (for “Build Your Dreams”) is a Chinese manufacturer of automobiles and batteries that is building electric bus fleets and monorails for cities around the world. Berkshire Hathaway bought a large stake in the country in 2008. Wang, a trained chemist and the company’s low-key founder, is worth about U.S.$5.5 billion.
> Charlie Munger, Buffett’s long-time business partner and Berkshire Hathaway’s vice chairman, first suggested investing in BYD, Buffett told Quick. “Charlie called me one day and says, ‘We’ve got to buy BYD. This guy runs it better than Thomas Edison.’ And I said, ‘That isn’t good enough.’ And he called a little later and said, ‘He’s a combination of Edison and Bill Gates.’ And I said, ‘Well, you’re warming up but it still isn’t good enough.'”
> Eventually, Munger’s view prevailed. “Now it’s worked out so well that I’m actually starting to remember that it was my idea,” Buffett said. Of Wang, he added, “He’s got big, big ideas and he’s very good at executing.”
From what I know, they started as a battery manufacturer and entered the car market by purchasing a small car manufacturer. I'll see if I can find a good article.
I thought fake news was mostly a right wing thing until I saw fake news about Musk and Tesla perpetuate among allegedly smarter liberals, the whole emerald mine thing being a great example. It changed how I was going to vote because I cannot stand fake news based on agendas.
It's fake news plus the hypocrisy on climate change, with folks willing to make it worse by spreading FUD about electric cars just because someone they don't like is associated with them. That's how my ideals on climate change changed, can't help folks that won't help themselves. It's not worth any sacrifices on my end. Not to mention promoting CCP companies over US ones for the same reason.
The same goes to smartphone as well, that's why Samsung was and is still winning the smartphone market due to its superior display manufacturing capability. BYD used to be the major OEM battery supplier for cellphones then smartphones, and Samsung used to be the major OEM LCD display supplier for cellphones then smartphones including Sony [1].
[1] How China’s BYD Became Tesla’s Biggest Threat:
London buses spend a lot of time stopped at bus stops. I wonder if it would ever make sense to install a 500kW pantograph charger at each stop to give 3-4 minutes of top up.
In Zürich Switzerland the calculation was done between placing charging systems at end terminals or at the central garage (where busses park over night).
It was determined that a central garage charging setup is better because the time the bus spends at the end station may get shortened significantly in order to keep the bus on schedule. So charging time would be very irregular. Also to get the power infrastructure to those locations is very costly compared to a central location.
The new battery bus fleet in Zürich can run for about half a day and then return to the central garage.
Future buses are expected to become more efficient and have larger batteries so the central charging setup makes sense.
The central garage has a fast charging setup for 74 busses underground. It is a very impressive setup.
> London buses spend a lot of time stopped at bus stops.
A lot of cars spend a lot of time stopped at traffic lights and often stopped/crawling in traffic, and it's probably why start-stop mechanisms can really improve fuel efficiency. Engineering Explained with "Americans Have No Idea How Much Fuel Idling Uses":
Hungary, Budapest has been running battery augment trolleybuses since 2005. They are super handy if you need to divert them for any reason and also it allows for more flexible routing but their range is quite limited, only 4km.
They also experimented with a few electric buses and that also had range problems but much more importantly they realized if they had hundreds of buses charging overnight it would be a significant strain on the electricity system. Distributing the buses throughout the system and their charging in time by charging them at stops would be a solution to this.
> Contrary to common disinformation about electric vehicles, data from the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) has shown that EVs are 20 times less likely to catch fire than petrol and diesel cars
It’s strange how FUD related to this has spread considering how many lithium ion batteries each individual has around them right now, and has had for decades.
The EU aims to phase out sales of diesel busses by 2030 but might achieve that several years early, possibly even eliminating diesel from the entire 200K fleet of city busses by that same year.