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355 points pavel_lishin | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.301s | source
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myrmidon ◴[] 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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1. namibj ◴[] No.45392335[source]
Imagine if they could just order from vendors like "Solaris Bus & Coach sp z o.o."... They're even running some https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_Urbino_12_hydrogen over here that I at least hope have their hydrogen premium costs paid for by the EU grant the decals claim. Riding them I can't note a difference between what I would expect from a battery only version. But I can't imagine it's cheaper to take the hit of hydrogen roundtripping and the cost of hydrogen infrastructure just to avoid some 400 kW DC fast chargers at some strategic extended-stay bus stops where they take their lunch break (kick the last passenger out, walk outside, plug it in, lock the door and take a walk or go back inside and read the newspaper, and at the end unplug and hang it back on the electricity-vending-machine).

Unless it's different for bus drivers than for truck drivers, there is plenty mandatory break time under German rules to allow fast charging of such style to give enough range. And it's easy to set up by just fitting route-after-route with the charging spots and keeping a few diesel busses in reserve to handle broken chargers until there are enough chargers to maintain bus schedules even if some of them go offline.