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US cities pay too much for buses

(www.bloomberg.com)
355 points pavel_lishin | 6 comments | 26 Sep 25 13:57 UTC | HN request time: 1.006s | 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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paddy_m ◴[26 Sep 25 17:39 UTC] No.45389047[source]▶
citation needed.
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myrmidon ◴[26 Sep 25 18:57 UTC] No.45389836[source]▶
Here you go: https://afdc.energy.gov/files/u/publication/financial_analys...

My takeaway: No reasonable assumption exists that would make operating battery electric busses more expensive than diesel ones.

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1. numpad0 ◴[26 Sep 25 19:23 UTC] No.45390080[source]▶

  > On the other hand, he told us that without subsidies, the life cycle costs would be "diesel buses, followed by hybrids, and then with a huge difference, EV buses and then fuel cell buses." He asserts that, as things stand, "neither EV buses nor fuel cell buses would be profitable in terms of life cycle costs without subsidies."

  > Tai said, "Relying on subsidies to introduce EV buses and fuel cell buses cannot be considered a healthy business situation," and added, "I strongly hope that technological innovation and price competition will progress throughout the zero-emission bus market."
"EV too cheap to meter ICE dead" is just hype. The realoty is it's not much more than another subsidy milking, yet. Cleaner air in the city is nice, though.

1: https://trafficnews-jp.translate.goog/post/587367/3

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2. myrmidon ◴[26 Sep 25 20:05 UTC] No.45390509[source]▶
Life cycles costs are not what is being argued here, but operating costs of a battery electric bus compared to a diesel one.

The electric variant is clearly significantly cheaper to operate (like my linked source shows) even taking charging infrastructure and maintenance into account.

Battery electric busses becoming CAPEX competitive with diesel ones is also just a matter of time in my view (case in point: singapore already gets those for less than the US currently pays for diesel ones).

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3. happosai ◴[27 Sep 25 00:29 UTC] No.45392398[source]▶
Your link doesn't work. However, I know electric busses have won tenders over diesel in many places that don't have any eco-subsidies.

Japan may have special conditions, like diesel/electricity price may be unfavorable or "build local" rules and no local competition in EV building.

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4. numpad0 ◴[27 Sep 25 05:32 UTC] No.45393385[source]▶
ok, it looks like `?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en` parameters were mandatory, sorry. fixed link: https://trafficnews-jp.translate.goog/post/587367/3?_x_tr_sl...
5. numpad0 ◴[27 Sep 25 05:57 UTC] No.45393483[source]▶

  > Even looking purely at the financials, diesel is fucked.
  > My takeaway: No reasonable assumption exists that would make operating battery electric busses more expensive than diesel ones.
The problem here is that these were your initial opinions that aren't supported by the reality. Diesel is fucked, long term, and that's good, but that's also long term future, not the reality right now like you were arguing. The matter of time is sometimes the matter.
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6. myrmidon ◴[27 Sep 25 08:02 UTC] No.45393970{3}[source]▶
Note how the whole thread has been about cost of diesel fuel vs electricity from the start, and how I'm explicitly talking about operating costs for them.

From the linked analysis you will also find that the higher price example for diesel bus in the article ($980k) is already more expensive than a typical BEV alternative and likely a net drain on the operator (by comparison) within the first year.