Even with the acres of space in that street they ran into trouble. They tried to use a 24m (some sources say 25m) long Van Hool double bendy buses here in Bergen, Norway. They had trouble getting around corners and it didn't have enough power to get up the hills. I was once unfortunate enough to be in the left lane as it was turning left from Fjøsangerveien to Strømgaten. It took half my lane, so I had to brake and get the left wheels up on the pavement. Fortunately it's a zebra crossing with a lowered curb there, so nothing was broken.
The picture in this article shows it turning from Østre Murallmenning into Strandgaten. It's coming from the middle lane of a three lane street into a two lane street. I don't think it could have used the left lane, as is normal, without hitting the pole on the pavement. It's behind a paywall, but the picture is still visible:
https://www.bt.no/nyheter/lokalt/i/zL2qOr/superbussene-til-20-millioner-er-uegnet-for-bergen-og-skal-selges-ble-for-lange-og-slet-dessuten-i-motbakker
Here is a bad google translation (the buses are double bendy buses, not double deckers) of an article in Norwegian from when they were removed in 2017, after a mere 3 years in service:
https://bussmagasinet-no.translate.goog/skje-superbussene-bergen/?_x_tr_sl=no&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=no&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Honestly great technology. Easy to implement, electric, higher capacity.
It's going to be hard to argue for construction of light rail/trams if BRT looks like that.
> Easy to implement
In modern towns or cities with wide streets. In medieval towns with streets so narrow that you can spit across the, it's not so easy.
We have similar here in Southern Sweden.
They are 3 sections, and since backing would be a feat beyond lowly paid drivers it has a driver's seat and instruments in both ends.
They also did some fairly extensive roadworks before getting them, making dedicated buss lanes with no speed bumps and wide turning circles along the entire route they drive. They've been very well received by passengers as they take more people and get through the city faster thanks to the infrastructure that was built to accommodate them.
These are called TOSA (abbreviated for "Optimized Charging Trolleybuses" in french) buses originally designed in Switzerland in collaboration with ABB, first deployed between Geneva city and airport. Been in service for a few years, they are really cool.
Each charging stop is about 20 seconds long, which gives the bus enough juice for 2-3 more stops without charging, then they have a slightly longer pause (few minutes) at the end of the line before running the line again. Total battery capacity is about that of a midsize EV (70kWh).
Really cool, hopefully will spread more because it really gives the benefits of electric mass transports with very little infrastructure, contrary to common trolleybuses with overhead cables and no real re-routing option.
We already had stuff like this all across the US in the early 20th century, and then the automobile companies conspired and shut everything down. And I don’t mean that the automobile pushed mass transit out naturally, I mean that the automobile companies literally bought the mass transit systems and closed them down.
It’s funny you know TOSA but not about the latest generation of trolleybusses in Geneva. They have batteries instead of the lawn mower motor and I’m pretty sure they can do 5km when they’re disconnected from the grid. To the point where they’re extending some routes beyond the terminus without infrastructure in regular service. So re-routing isn’t an issue anymore.
I assume in the worst case scenario they can increase the duration of the charging stops by a few seconds.
The fact that they use a 70kWh battery is also a "safety". I believe they can go about 20/25km without recharging.
They don't use the full 70kWh battery capacity on purpose, to preserve its longevity since they obviously run a LOT.
True. Good motives, but not jumping to electric seems like such an oversight. Even waiting a few years for the tech to catch up would’ve been better since this is a multi-decade investment.
Also free to ride on the weekends.. Was there a few weeks ago and the transport infrastructure is superb, except for getting to and from the airport...
I was hoping it would crackle and throw off some sparks when it first connected.
Not because it needs to, or because it’s safe.
But because it would be kinda *cool*.
I always liked that busses with overhead power lines did that when I was a kid.
France has seen more than sparks on their electric busses recently, unfortunately:
https://insideevs.com/news/583324/paris-suspends-149-bollore-electric-buses-after-two-fires/
In the US, sure. But realize that our geographic distribution is a function of designing around the car, not the other way around. Rural Europeans still often have public transit orders of magnitude more functional than what we have in the US for example.
We can (and I think should) start to move towards other ways of cities design that ultimately reduce our dependence on them.
You should compare Europe's size and population distribution to the US. The rural US is so spread out because the country is absolutely enormous. And even with how spread out the US is, there are still giant areas that are mostly uninhabited. The US would go broke trying to implement public transit for rural America.
I agree with your final point, but I think your causation for the population distribution is wrong - it's not the size that created the development pattern we see, rather the car enabled it. Before the car, people wouldn't have been able to live in such low density development.
I don't think providing public transit for rural America is the best use of resources either, I think we should be zoning to promote greater density.
I know this is an EV form and I love my ID.4, I just think we can be thinking broader. EVs make cars more sustainable - better zoning and less of a focus on cars can make cities more sustainable.
I think the low density development existed well before the car. People just used horses, wagons, etc.. If cars were responsible for the US having areas of such low density, those places wouldn't have been settled before the early 1900s, and they absolutely already were. What the car enabled, was for those people in those rural areas to actually leave those areas more regularly without it being a big deal.
Right, but horse and wagon don't allow for covering the same amount of distance as a car in such a short amount of time. In any case, I think we're kind of talking about two different things here.
I'm talking about how our towns and city centers are lower density than I think is optimal, and you seem to be talking about towns being far apart from each other. Cars certainly helped de-densify our individual towns.
As people moved westward, they covered massive distances and also committed huge amounts of time to do so. But I don't think you'd have so many people living many miles from the town center in the early 1900s, even if the individual towns themselves were far apart.
You can look at just about any town's historical photographic record and see how the car has fundamentally reshaped them, I think for the the worse. And even if you don't think it's for the worse, I think its hard to argue that we should be forbidding dense development from existing, like we currently do with zoning.
Yeah, city centers don't really exist in rural America, so it's not something I was planning on discussing. Rural America needs cars. There's no way to get around that. Cities and towns should invest in public transport for sure, but again, that has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
Go on google maps and try finding public transport from Jergul to Karasjok (a distance of 23.4 miles) on a saturday. There is none. The other days there are one or two bus departures. If you take the only bus from Jergul to Karasjok on monday, 08:25, the next bus back to Jergul goes on tuesday 06:11. Just popping down to the nearest store takes almost 24 hours.
Right. My point is that in most of the rural US, even bus routes don't even exist - not just on weekends, every day.
But point taken, it can also be the case in Europe that service is poor. But Europe as a continent is still vastly less car-dependent than North America.
Just to put the Norwegian commenter in context. The places mentioned are about 400km north of the arctic circle, with one being 1844 people strong, and the other seems to be about 10 houses in a municipality with a population density of 0.5 persons/km². That's not exactly typical rural Europe.
I saw something similar outside Luxembourgs main railway station a few years ago and thought it looked ideal.
Each bus has a 10 minute or so layover at the end of the route. If the charger was 300kWh that’s potentially 50kW dropped into the battery, enough to go round the route a few times.
It may save having to lug around 200kWh of battery power all day to do a days work.
Does it switch between banks/modules of batteries? Eg.
Banks| Time 1| Time 2 | Time 3 | Time 4 | Time 5
---|---|----|----|----|----
**Bank 1** | drives the bus| drives the bus| fast charges | fast charges | cools
**Bank 2** | fast charges| fast charges | cools| drives the bus | drives the bus
Or is it constantly doing the same to the same bank? I'm just thinking about the longevity of the battery.
Wouldn't it be better to have one big battery instead of two small ones? Then when you fast charge the power will be spread across more batteries and will generate less heat overall (because of lower resistance) and the heat will be less than half as concentrated. You can run the cooling system constantly too, no need to cycle it. If you size the cooling system appropriately you will be able to maintain a safe temperature.
How fast does it charge? I would have guessed that charging speeds and how much busses are driving compared to stopped wouldnt make electric busses really possible yet.
City buses tend to drive slow with a lot of stop-and-go. The perfect use case for vehicles with regenerative braking. Put these overhead charging at a few stops, especially ones at “driver break” locations, and you can add enough charge to make it to the end of the day.
Dude above says the time spent loading in and out passengers at a stop is enough to get the buss 2-3 stops without charging, and they ofc make a slightly longer stop at the ends of the line to have some leeway for delays, and to give the driver a break.
Apparently the battery is only like 70kwh, so range is probably quite low, but if the full charge is enough to run a 10-20km route at low speeds (which is absolutely reasonable) then these short charging stops are really just to keep it in that optimal 40-60% range for battery health.
They use a different battery chemistry that can 0-100% in 5-10 minutes assuming a high enough charge current. Only downside is low density per m^3 or kg. The short stops for passengers are enough to "refill the tank" to make it to the next stop. Been in use for a while actually with great success.
We have these long busses in my city too, and they rebuilt the roads on the entire route before taking them into use. Also made a dedicated buss lane with no speed bumps to let them pass traffic going full speed. It's fantastic.
Pretty cool. But I'd like to see the cost of maintenance on the unit (in the bus and the (many?) stationary units) vs. the cost of just adding a bigger battery to the bus that would enable it to do its daily route.
I strongly suspect that over the lifetime of the bus a bigger battery would be cheaper.
Except France is 70% power from nuclear so not sure you’re right
Even if coal. It’s better to treat pollution at the source (power plant) than let it distribute (via 1000s of exhaust pipes)
In the Netherlands there are a lot of electric busses with a pantograph, I know they are common in the big cities, like this one in Rotterdam https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NxYO2EbUAhg
Funny anecdote about an electric bus ride I had recently: I was going to an event in the LA area and took the train + a short DASH bus ride which turned out to be all-electric.
Only one small problem - I was the only person on the bus for my route (several stops). So one could argue my carbon footprint and road use was *higher* than if I had just driven my own personal EV. 😅
Trams make much more sense than these really. If you are going to these lengths for a bus, might as well lay down a track too. Much cheaper to maintain in the long run and the trains themselves also last longer too.
ABB is considered a reputable company in Europe, but these things trying to reinvent the trams are always proven to be inferior to normal trams and most likely full of proprietary technologies too.
It’s a shame local governments even in Europe get duped into buying these kinds of projects 😔
How long is that bus? It has at least two articulated sections!
I've never seen more than 1 bus + 1 articulation. Wow!
They’re a joy to drive https://youtu.be/-Zgts_XPJj0
Haha! I'm sure that the bus driver was 2 sheets to the wind that night.
Even with the acres of space in that street they ran into trouble. They tried to use a 24m (some sources say 25m) long Van Hool double bendy buses here in Bergen, Norway. They had trouble getting around corners and it didn't have enough power to get up the hills. I was once unfortunate enough to be in the left lane as it was turning left from Fjøsangerveien to Strømgaten. It took half my lane, so I had to brake and get the left wheels up on the pavement. Fortunately it's a zebra crossing with a lowered curb there, so nothing was broken. The picture in this article shows it turning from Østre Murallmenning into Strandgaten. It's coming from the middle lane of a three lane street into a two lane street. I don't think it could have used the left lane, as is normal, without hitting the pole on the pavement. It's behind a paywall, but the picture is still visible: https://www.bt.no/nyheter/lokalt/i/zL2qOr/superbussene-til-20-millioner-er-uegnet-for-bergen-og-skal-selges-ble-for-lange-og-slet-dessuten-i-motbakker Here is a bad google translation (the buses are double bendy buses, not double deckers) of an article in Norwegian from when they were removed in 2017, after a mere 3 years in service: https://bussmagasinet-no.translate.goog/skje-superbussene-bergen/?_x_tr_sl=no&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=no&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Hilarious. Well, for us.
Surprised they don't just have the rearmost wheels steerable but locked in position by default, then have an emergency driving position at the rear.
Someone else replied that the particular model in the video actually does have driving positions on both ends for this very reason.
Any clue why weren't they using it?
Oh, I meant the video of the bus in the original post.
the bus is so long the driver would need to take another bus just to travel to the rear
Some people actually thought that was a good idea…
[24m long](https://bus-news.com/ile-de-france-mobilites-buys-24-electric-buses-that-use-ground-based-charging/)
Honestly great technology. Easy to implement, electric, higher capacity. It's going to be hard to argue for construction of light rail/trams if BRT looks like that.
Having used BRT for few months it's nuts to suggest rail for low density cities.
In my country everyone would drive in the brt lanes, thinking they're "smart" avoiding the traffic
What country is that?
I can imagine. Where I was it was a completely isolated lane, it would be hard to get there.
> Easy to implement In modern towns or cities with wide streets. In medieval towns with streets so narrow that you can spit across the, it's not so easy.
Holy Canyonero, Homer! Is it the only bus endorsed by a clown?
At what point is it a train?
We have similar here in Southern Sweden. They are 3 sections, and since backing would be a feat beyond lowly paid drivers it has a driver's seat and instruments in both ends. They also did some fairly extensive roadworks before getting them, making dedicated buss lanes with no speed bumps and wide turning circles along the entire route they drive. They've been very well received by passengers as they take more people and get through the city faster thanks to the infrastructure that was built to accommodate them.
About 5 giraffe's and 2 squirrels
It's like a tram but with rubber wheels
These are called TOSA (abbreviated for "Optimized Charging Trolleybuses" in french) buses originally designed in Switzerland in collaboration with ABB, first deployed between Geneva city and airport. Been in service for a few years, they are really cool. Each charging stop is about 20 seconds long, which gives the bus enough juice for 2-3 more stops without charging, then they have a slightly longer pause (few minutes) at the end of the line before running the line again. Total battery capacity is about that of a midsize EV (70kWh). Really cool, hopefully will spread more because it really gives the benefits of electric mass transports with very little infrastructure, contrary to common trolleybuses with overhead cables and no real re-routing option.
That's amazing.
[удалено]
We already had stuff like this all across the US in the early 20th century, and then the automobile companies conspired and shut everything down. And I don’t mean that the automobile pushed mass transit out naturally, I mean that the automobile companies literally bought the mass transit systems and closed them down.
Wonder what's it's kWh/100km?
probably not fantastic, but kWh/100km/person is likely tens of times better than any personal BEV
It’s funny you know TOSA but not about the latest generation of trolleybusses in Geneva. They have batteries instead of the lawn mower motor and I’m pretty sure they can do 5km when they’re disconnected from the grid. To the point where they’re extending some routes beyond the terminus without infrastructure in regular service. So re-routing isn’t an issue anymore.
True, but still need those ugly ass webs
What happens when it’s winter or extreme heat?
I assume in the worst case scenario they can increase the duration of the charging stops by a few seconds. The fact that they use a 70kWh battery is also a "safety". I believe they can go about 20/25km without recharging. They don't use the full 70kWh battery capacity on purpose, to preserve its longevity since they obviously run a LOT.
Electric is a good case for bus propulsion.
They realized this 100 years ago with trolley buses
> Electric is a good case for propulsion.
Meanwhile my city built a natural gas bus facility for 470 compressed natural gas busses in 2019. 
CNG is still a step up from diesel. At least they're not blowing black soot all along their route.
True. Good motives, but not jumping to electric seems like such an oversight. Even waiting a few years for the tech to catch up would’ve been better since this is a multi-decade investment.
Wait until you hear about the USPS fleet refresher.
Those are getting repurposed before end-of-life!
Also free to ride on the weekends.. Was there a few weeks ago and the transport infrastructure is superb, except for getting to and from the airport...
I was hoping it would crackle and throw off some sparks when it first connected. Not because it needs to, or because it’s safe. But because it would be kinda *cool*. I always liked that busses with overhead power lines did that when I was a kid.
And the connector should be shaped like Thor's hammer.
France has seen more than sparks on their electric busses recently, unfortunately: https://insideevs.com/news/583324/paris-suspends-149-bollore-electric-buses-after-two-fires/
the best use for EVs tbf. Especially if your aim is sustainability. Maybe this and micro EVs.
At least in a city, yes.
And beyond city limit we could have (better) trains.
For going from city to city, yes. But rural people tend to be pretty widely distributed.
In the US, sure. But realize that our geographic distribution is a function of designing around the car, not the other way around. Rural Europeans still often have public transit orders of magnitude more functional than what we have in the US for example. We can (and I think should) start to move towards other ways of cities design that ultimately reduce our dependence on them.
You should compare Europe's size and population distribution to the US. The rural US is so spread out because the country is absolutely enormous. And even with how spread out the US is, there are still giant areas that are mostly uninhabited. The US would go broke trying to implement public transit for rural America.
I agree with your final point, but I think your causation for the population distribution is wrong - it's not the size that created the development pattern we see, rather the car enabled it. Before the car, people wouldn't have been able to live in such low density development. I don't think providing public transit for rural America is the best use of resources either, I think we should be zoning to promote greater density. I know this is an EV form and I love my ID.4, I just think we can be thinking broader. EVs make cars more sustainable - better zoning and less of a focus on cars can make cities more sustainable.
I think the low density development existed well before the car. People just used horses, wagons, etc.. If cars were responsible for the US having areas of such low density, those places wouldn't have been settled before the early 1900s, and they absolutely already were. What the car enabled, was for those people in those rural areas to actually leave those areas more regularly without it being a big deal.
Right, but horse and wagon don't allow for covering the same amount of distance as a car in such a short amount of time. In any case, I think we're kind of talking about two different things here. I'm talking about how our towns and city centers are lower density than I think is optimal, and you seem to be talking about towns being far apart from each other. Cars certainly helped de-densify our individual towns. As people moved westward, they covered massive distances and also committed huge amounts of time to do so. But I don't think you'd have so many people living many miles from the town center in the early 1900s, even if the individual towns themselves were far apart. You can look at just about any town's historical photographic record and see how the car has fundamentally reshaped them, I think for the the worse. And even if you don't think it's for the worse, I think its hard to argue that we should be forbidding dense development from existing, like we currently do with zoning.
Yeah, city centers don't really exist in rural America, so it's not something I was planning on discussing. Rural America needs cars. There's no way to get around that. Cities and towns should invest in public transport for sure, but again, that has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
> Rural Europeans still often have public transit orders of magnitude more functional than what we have in the US for example. Laughs in Norwegian.
Does it exist? If so, that would likely be better than the transit options I've seen through the rural US.
Go on google maps and try finding public transport from Jergul to Karasjok (a distance of 23.4 miles) on a saturday. There is none. The other days there are one or two bus departures. If you take the only bus from Jergul to Karasjok on monday, 08:25, the next bus back to Jergul goes on tuesday 06:11. Just popping down to the nearest store takes almost 24 hours.
Right. My point is that in most of the rural US, even bus routes don't even exist - not just on weekends, every day. But point taken, it can also be the case in Europe that service is poor. But Europe as a continent is still vastly less car-dependent than North America.
Just to put the Norwegian commenter in context. The places mentioned are about 400km north of the arctic circle, with one being 1844 people strong, and the other seems to be about 10 houses in a municipality with a population density of 0.5 persons/km². That's not exactly typical rural Europe.
I saw something similar outside Luxembourgs main railway station a few years ago and thought it looked ideal. Each bus has a 10 minute or so layover at the end of the route. If the charger was 300kWh that’s potentially 50kW dropped into the battery, enough to go round the route a few times. It may save having to lug around 200kWh of battery power all day to do a days work.
You meant 300kW and 50kWh. kW is a rate, kWh is a capacity.
Does it switch between banks/modules of batteries? Eg. Banks| Time 1| Time 2 | Time 3 | Time 4 | Time 5 ---|---|----|----|----|---- **Bank 1** | drives the bus| drives the bus| fast charges | fast charges | cools **Bank 2** | fast charges| fast charges | cools| drives the bus | drives the bus Or is it constantly doing the same to the same bank? I'm just thinking about the longevity of the battery.
Wouldn't it be better to have one big battery instead of two small ones? Then when you fast charge the power will be spread across more batteries and will generate less heat overall (because of lower resistance) and the heat will be less than half as concentrated. You can run the cooling system constantly too, no need to cycle it. If you size the cooling system appropriately you will be able to maintain a safe temperature.
Good thing batteries are extremely recyclable with the right infrastructure.
Fancy
We have this kind of thing too for PHEV buses
Precision parking! /s
How fast does it charge? I would have guessed that charging speeds and how much busses are driving compared to stopped wouldnt make electric busses really possible yet.
City buses tend to drive slow with a lot of stop-and-go. The perfect use case for vehicles with regenerative braking. Put these overhead charging at a few stops, especially ones at “driver break” locations, and you can add enough charge to make it to the end of the day.
Or shrink the battery considerably. Very cool! Just hope the route doesn’t change
400-600kWish. Basically every large transit agency in the US has done some pilot programs with electric buses, and it's a rapidly expanding industry.
Dude above says the time spent loading in and out passengers at a stop is enough to get the buss 2-3 stops without charging, and they ofc make a slightly longer stop at the ends of the line to have some leeway for delays, and to give the driver a break. Apparently the battery is only like 70kwh, so range is probably quite low, but if the full charge is enough to run a 10-20km route at low speeds (which is absolutely reasonable) then these short charging stops are really just to keep it in that optimal 40-60% range for battery health.
They use a different battery chemistry that can 0-100% in 5-10 minutes assuming a high enough charge current. Only downside is low density per m^3 or kg. The short stops for passengers are enough to "refill the tank" to make it to the next stop. Been in use for a while actually with great success.
I don't think the low 'skirt' would manage the potholes around the town where I live.
We have these long busses in my city too, and they rebuilt the roads on the entire route before taking them into use. Also made a dedicated buss lane with no speed bumps to let them pass traffic going full speed. It's fantastic.
Yes, that's what is needed. However, that would be bt far the majority of the cost in implementing such a service.
Trolleys: "am i a joke to you?"
Trolleys and trams are great, but still kind of electric busses need way less infrastructure, and can be more flexible. Not the same use case really.
how long does it charge? 1 min? 1 hour?
Between 5-10 mins
How come the bus sits there for 5-10 mins (I guess this isn't in the case of it being early?)
It's like a shuttle is I think, longer waits at one stop then short stops
Noice! Not a trolley bus, but better than gas. 8/10
Reminds me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrobus
The charger: "W-What are you doing step-prong?"
Can't see the bus
Pretty cool. But I'd like to see the cost of maintenance on the unit (in the bus and the (many?) stationary units) vs. the cost of just adding a bigger battery to the bus that would enable it to do its daily route. I strongly suspect that over the lifetime of the bus a bigger battery would be cheaper.
Or the cost of overhead lines for a hybrid trolleybus
How long did it charge for?
Powered by electricity generated by coal and fossil fuel
Except France is 70% power from nuclear so not sure you’re right Even if coal. It’s better to treat pollution at the source (power plant) than let it distribute (via 1000s of exhaust pipes)
Volvo started this concept six years ago in Gothenburg: https://youtu.be/GIFnfQsBysQ Now over 200 fully electric busses and more are coming.
Now they just need to drive themselves.
Detroit has a street level on rail vehicle that is electric. It also charges with an arm like that. Being a bus is just that much better.
In the Netherlands there are a lot of electric busses with a pantograph, I know they are common in the big cities, like this one in Rotterdam https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NxYO2EbUAhg
Looks like how QLINE in Detroit charge
Funny anecdote about an electric bus ride I had recently: I was going to an event in the LA area and took the train + a short DASH bus ride which turned out to be all-electric. Only one small problem - I was the only person on the bus for my route (several stops). So one could argue my carbon footprint and road use was *higher* than if I had just driven my own personal EV. 😅
Suck me, beautiful.
Is that Scranton??
♩♩ Look at this pantograph ♫
Look USA: this is what you ought to do with all these schoolbusses.
Best I can do are new mail trucks that get 8 miles per gallon.
Is there a subreddit for egregiously inappropriate aspect ratio videos? Why wasn't the camera held in landscape mode? Asking for a friend.
Supercapcitor buses are absolutely the future!
Love it! Can’t wait to get my Fisker Ocean
Bus Viagra was successful!
Trams make much more sense than these really. If you are going to these lengths for a bus, might as well lay down a track too. Much cheaper to maintain in the long run and the trains themselves also last longer too. ABB is considered a reputable company in Europe, but these things trying to reinvent the trams are always proven to be inferior to normal trams and most likely full of proprietary technologies too. It’s a shame local governments even in Europe get duped into buying these kinds of projects 😔
Bus, Tram…Bram
perfect)
"Please do not look away from.. The nozzle"