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US cities pay too much for buses

(www.bloomberg.com)
355 points pavel_lishin | 8 comments | 26 Sep 25 13:57 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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myrmidon ◴[26 Sep 25 14:24 UTC] No.45386847[source]▶
I think this shows one of the downsides of trade barriers very well: You get stuck with undesirable industries (diesel bus manufacturing), binding capital and labor better used elsewhere (and you easily end up with underperforming, overpriced solutions, too).

But I'm curious how much this actually affects transport costs. If such a bus is used 12h/day, then even overpaying 100% for the vehicle should get outscaled by labor + maintenance pretty quickly, long before the vehicle is replaced...

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mrits ◴[26 Sep 25 14:33 UTC] No.45386958[source]▶
What is wrong with diesel bus manufacturing? Just the exhaust pedestrians have to breath in? It seems near the bottom of the list for things we'd need to solve for carbon emissions.
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myrmidon ◴[26 Sep 25 14:39 UTC] No.45387028[source]▶
I honestly don't think there is any future for them longer term (>10y). Long distance, diesel vehicles might hold out for a bit longer than a decade, but the situation looks kinda inevitable even there to me.

CO2 wise, electrifying a bus like this should pay off much quicker than replacing individual vehicles, because utilization is higher (not a lot of people drive 12h a day).

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xethos ◴[26 Sep 25 16:04 UTC] No.45388048[source]▶
Even more damning, diesel is objectively, inarguably more expensive to run, costing more than four times as much as [Vancouver's] battery-electric busses in fuel/electricity.

Even looking purely at the financials, diesel is fucked.

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1. bombcar ◴[26 Sep 25 17:36 UTC] No.45389014[source]▶
Diesel’s last remaining benefits are of no value for a bus (locomotive-class horsepower possibilities and rapid refueling) as a bus never weighs much and goes in a circle.
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2. roryirvine ◴[26 Sep 25 17:52 UTC] No.45389188[source]▶
Yep - and, in urban areas, buses are pretty much the best possible use case for BEVs, aren't they? Short distance, high utilisation, predictable routes with far more stop/start than normal traffic.

Consider also that bus depots are the perfect site for big battery banks hooked up to their charging stations, and tend to have plenty of room for solar panels on the roof. So electrification is good for the grid too.

It's one of those rare situations where everyone benefits.

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3. duskwuff ◴[26 Sep 25 18:21 UTC] No.45389486[source]▶
> in urban areas, buses are pretty much the best possible use case for BEVs, aren't they?

I'd argue that mail delivery is an even better use case - it starts and stops even more frequently than a bus, practically never needs to travel at high speeds, and only needs to make one run a day.

But it's not a competition - they're both good use cases.

4. Symbiote ◴[26 Sep 25 18:32 UTC] No.45389581[source]▶
I think existing electric locomotives are more powerful than existing diesel locomotives.

The "most powerful diesel–electric locomotive model ever built on a single frame", the EMD DDA40X, provides 5MW.

The EURO9000, "currently the most powerful locomotive on the European market" provides 9MW under electric power.

USA-made locomotives are so far down the list on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_powerful_locomoti... that I suspect there's some other reason they're not needed, e.g. spreading the braking force across multiple locomotives throughout the train.

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5. bombcar ◴[26 Sep 25 19:24 UTC] No.45390086[source]▶
That electric locomotive has a really long cord attached to it - it only has about 2MW under diesel.

Once you allow attaching an extension cord, electric wins ever time; there's zero competition.

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6. rsynnott ◴[27 Sep 25 08:34 UTC] No.45394104[source]▶
The first one feels like a red herring, anyway; some places have battery powered _locomotives_, now.
7. crote ◴[27 Sep 25 13:02 UTC] No.45395369{3}[source]▶
Trains run on rails, which doesn't exactly allow them to go off-highway. If you're already spending a fortune on building the rail infrastructure, why wouldn't you spend a few bucks extra to install the extension cord?
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8. bombcar ◴[28 Sep 25 01:58 UTC] No.45401096{4}[source]▶
Because in most places in the world, the rail is already built.

So it's either extend the existing rail network, or try to build a new one entirely.

(Apparently it's something on the line of $10m/mile to add electrification, so presumably building it while building out is less, but not much less.)