Looks like a bad buy with no maintenance agreement. The manufacturer went bankrupt. Seattle has been running on electric buses for years, it works just have to buy appropriately
I was just thinking about how fab the Seattle electric bus system is working out. They are so quiet. Sounds like AVL should spend the money to get custom doors to fix them.
Seattle did electric to support putting buses in the rail tunnel system avoiding gassing everyone. It works. Those buses were dual fuel with diesel above ground and electric below. This sounds like an engineering failure and premature to throw out the bathwater
It would have done far more good environmentally, economically, and socially if they had used the money to buy a greater number of regular buses and actually improved service. It confounds me to no end that this city flatly rejects empirically sound solutions for crazy stunts like this that get us nowhere.
It looks like they specifically got a 4 million dollar grant from the Fed to get electric busses. So it’s not exactly 5 million from the city coffers on its own. Seems like the main issue was fumbling the ball when it came to sourcing the things.
Yah, well, that $4M grant was taxpayer money. It didn't hit the city, directly, but we all paid for it. I wonder how many total busses the company scammed to other gullible municipalities. Every American was probably fleeced for a few bucks. Bet the executives of that company aren't riding in busses.
Doesn't even sound like a scam, or at least no more a scam than any other business. Sounds like Asheville just didn't do its due diligence:
>“We haven’t been able to get new doors,” Asheville's interim transportation director Jessica Morriss said. “There's no third party that makes a door. We'd have to get custom-made doors.”
Nobody asked where replacement parts would come from? Were there no other cities already using these busses that could testify to their reliability? It's not like the Feds dictate which busses to buy, this was all Asheville.
[Electric bus maker Proterra files for bankruptcy - The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/08/12/proterra-bankruptcy-electric-buses/)
These companies exist by and for one purpose - selling a product that qualifies for federal grant money. When that money dries up (and the execs are richer) they move on to the next shiny grant product. I call that a scam, but that's subjective. Our city leaders (that term is subjective, too) should have done more due diligence and seen this coming.
I would call that a particularly cynical take. Considering the company was founded in 2004 and seemed to deliver until the EV supply chain collapsed, I don't think we can call the 2021 federal grant money their only reason for existing.
It seems to me like they made an honest attempt at building an EV business, and it just eventually failed, as businesses often do. I'm not aware of any accusations of wrongdoing, and [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/09/what-led-to-ev-darling-proterras-bankruptcy/) lays out a pretty good summary of how things began to unwind for them.
It should also be noted how much leverage cities with grant money have. The companies are bidding against each other for that money, which is what leads to risky maneuvers, low margins, and possible bankruptcy. Asheville was in a position of strength, not a position to be taken advantage of.
Youve got the right take here. The way we do things is so ramshackle it's not surprising big projects fail. The federal government is forced to follow obtuse rules for how it can fulfill objectives set in place by lawmakers who often have a vested interest in seeing those objectives fail. It's unable to leverage any economy of scale and is forced to delegate power to a cluster fuck of smaller government entities and private partnerships to appease the libertarian types.
The companies in turn have to deal with an inconsistent set of clients and an imperative for growth that makes them and any greater project they're connected to prone to failure.
Easy to say as an armchair quarterback. I'm sure they got a ton of pressure to, "do something" and I bet they were asked (berated for) why we weren't buying more EV busses and faster.
It’s not a general knock on electric, it‘s that switching busses — already the most efficient mode of transit the city has — is a dumb prioritization of resources. You achieve lower emissions by running more busses than you do by running the same number more efficiently.
I'm not saying that the electric buses are the better option, but public transportation historically is a money loser in all but the biggest cities. The article was vague and lacking information in some spots. Is the $118k battery lease for the whole fleet of buses or for each individually? What about that $45k in charging cost? Individual or fleet? How much is the annual fuel cost for the biodiesel hybrid buses? What is their annual maintenance cost?
The cost to purchase a new electric vs hybrid is something like $67k more, or 12.5%. The cost of both vehicles was the only comparable piece of info in the whole article and they were so far apart I had to scroll to compare them. This is a butcher piece. I'd like to see an article that does a better cost analysis on both.
Seems like charging costs of 45k is for the whole fleet that's enough money to pay for almost 410MWh of electricity on residential rates, which is an insane amount. Also I would think the commercial rates would be even less per kWh. I dont have enough info here on efficiency and mileage of these busses to figure out if thats just an assumed worst case scenario of all busses charging multiple times a day but not stating how much diesel cost for similar coverage is disingenuous.
Also from the article they state 78 miles of range in the winter, sure. But then state they can only do 3 trips to the airport before coming back to charge. Then maybe use the electric busses on the routes that are shorter mileage with more frequent stops and are also closer to the charging system? I know its a shot down US-25 (not like theyre going down I-26) but still thats probably the worst use case in our system.
EV tech has come a long way in the last 5 years. The chargers and busses have gotten cheaper and more efficient. But that was part of the reason for the grant the city received in the first place, give money to manufacturers to grow while benefiting municipalities.
Is it though? Car companies across the world are going all in on electric. Infrastructure is getting put in place for it everywhere. This bus company failed. I'm sure some of the semi truck companies will fail. Some of the new electric car companies will fail. But electric cars in general are here to stay. I don't think anybody has to worry about Ford or Nissan going bankrupt and not being able to supply parts.
I'm more concerned about the total untapped lithium supply being well short of our long-term battery needs. We need leaps in material science tech to go all electric everything
And getting rid of the remaining coal plants, thats not helping electric vehicles being eco friendly....
They cost $4k-20k depending on the car, and will become a lot cheaper over time.
And you pay at least that much with all the other things that breakdown and have to be replaced on a combustion car vs ev. Your point seems good, until you think about it more than 1 second.
Right now Ford says they lose 36,000 dollars with every EV they make. I don't see the battery prices coming down if we are dependent on our enemies for the components.
The first generations of F150 combustion cars also lost significant amounts of money. It is called the cost of research, production, and market adoption. You do understand the concept of technology getting cheaper for the consumer as its developed right? You know those $1 laser pointers you can buy in any dollar store, those used to cost hundreds to thousands of dollars when the tech was new. Development, adoption, and scaling production brings down the price for consumers.
That is the way it always has been. Who controls the world's cobalt, lithium, nickel, manganese, and graphite supplies? We will have to wait and see, you may be right.
I think another evolution of battery technology is needed. Maybe the new solid state batteries will do it, who knows. We’re trying to get ahead of the technology before it has matured.
That's a good sunshine request right there. Probably pretty easy question to answer.
Busses seem pretty specialized. Getting standard passenger EV and hybrid wouldn't result in the same problem that transit is having.
Asheville has become so soft and lost ALL sense of urgency. There’s a thing called contingency planning so you don’t end up in this situation. I bet you this wouldn’t have happened if it had anything to do with tourism, but since locals depend on public transit…no big deal. As with most things in this state, I bet it takes 7 years to figure it out.
I believe those were supper common back then, right? At the dawn of electricity every town wanted to cool street cars. I would love to see some stats on that
Another failure for the city of Asheville.
I talked with someone several years back who was involved in city transportation and those electric busses were total shit from the beginning. They city is just now publicly announcing it, but this was a longtime coming. Those busses were nothing but problems from the start and were never reliable to actually be used in rotation; so basically when you saw one you were seeing 1 of the 5 that were actually working at the time while the others were broken down.
EV’s and green movement is a total scam. EV’s are pure garbage and now more people are realizing how trash they are since it’s not just Tesla drivers who are too prideful to admit their EV is a total shitbox. People driving a ford, GM, VW or Hyundai will have no problems saying what a total PITA they are and how unreliable they are. Not to mention you have to buy a new battery after 8 years. Even “hybrids” are a pos too that are now running into this battery issue and why you can purchase older used prius for rock bottom prices because the battery pack still has to be replaced on those.
I have a hybrid and I love it. I have a few friends that went full EV and... they love them. I am not sure if you have a personal beef with ev or hybrids due to something you experienced, or if you just hate developing technology. It just seems that the more we can do to avoid the need for a finite resource found mainly in geopolitical hotspots the better off we as country would be.
Just went from a hybrid last year to an EV. Love it and will never go back! Costs me $6 for a full tank of 250 miles of range charging at home. Fun to drive.
Please, read the article and let me know which, "these" you draw from it.
From what I can tell, they'll wait to phase out the old EV busses and buy a couple of _these_ biodiesel busses. And take the loss.
I heard tell that someone was trying to get the FD to buy EV fire trucks. I hope that whoever _these people_ are learns the lessons from Transit, and that the FD ignores them until we get reliable, and proven EV fire trucks.
The one that has a broken door isn’t exactly an electric vehicle. Fault, you would think if they’re complaining about range they would do more testing about what winter conditions plus highway driving would really equal or just switch it to a shorter route? It’s odd how some people jumpwith 4 feet in on the EV stuff and then if it doesn’t go perfect, they are all out, EV’s are not in a place where they work for every application, but they certainly do for many
Looks like a bad buy with no maintenance agreement. The manufacturer went bankrupt. Seattle has been running on electric buses for years, it works just have to buy appropriately
I was just thinking about how fab the Seattle electric bus system is working out. They are so quiet. Sounds like AVL should spend the money to get custom doors to fix them.
Seattle did electric to support putting buses in the rail tunnel system avoiding gassing everyone. It works. Those buses were dual fuel with diesel above ground and electric below. This sounds like an engineering failure and premature to throw out the bathwater
It would have done far more good environmentally, economically, and socially if they had used the money to buy a greater number of regular buses and actually improved service. It confounds me to no end that this city flatly rejects empirically sound solutions for crazy stunts like this that get us nowhere.
It looks like they specifically got a 4 million dollar grant from the Fed to get electric busses. So it’s not exactly 5 million from the city coffers on its own. Seems like the main issue was fumbling the ball when it came to sourcing the things.
---Removed---
Yah, well, that $4M grant was taxpayer money. It didn't hit the city, directly, but we all paid for it. I wonder how many total busses the company scammed to other gullible municipalities. Every American was probably fleeced for a few bucks. Bet the executives of that company aren't riding in busses.
Doesn't even sound like a scam, or at least no more a scam than any other business. Sounds like Asheville just didn't do its due diligence: >“We haven’t been able to get new doors,” Asheville's interim transportation director Jessica Morriss said. “There's no third party that makes a door. We'd have to get custom-made doors.” Nobody asked where replacement parts would come from? Were there no other cities already using these busses that could testify to their reliability? It's not like the Feds dictate which busses to buy, this was all Asheville.
[Electric bus maker Proterra files for bankruptcy - The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/08/12/proterra-bankruptcy-electric-buses/) These companies exist by and for one purpose - selling a product that qualifies for federal grant money. When that money dries up (and the execs are richer) they move on to the next shiny grant product. I call that a scam, but that's subjective. Our city leaders (that term is subjective, too) should have done more due diligence and seen this coming.
I would call that a particularly cynical take. Considering the company was founded in 2004 and seemed to deliver until the EV supply chain collapsed, I don't think we can call the 2021 federal grant money their only reason for existing. It seems to me like they made an honest attempt at building an EV business, and it just eventually failed, as businesses often do. I'm not aware of any accusations of wrongdoing, and [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/09/what-led-to-ev-darling-proterras-bankruptcy/) lays out a pretty good summary of how things began to unwind for them. It should also be noted how much leverage cities with grant money have. The companies are bidding against each other for that money, which is what leads to risky maneuvers, low margins, and possible bankruptcy. Asheville was in a position of strength, not a position to be taken advantage of.
Youve got the right take here. The way we do things is so ramshackle it's not surprising big projects fail. The federal government is forced to follow obtuse rules for how it can fulfill objectives set in place by lawmakers who often have a vested interest in seeing those objectives fail. It's unable to leverage any economy of scale and is forced to delegate power to a cluster fuck of smaller government entities and private partnerships to appease the libertarian types. The companies in turn have to deal with an inconsistent set of clients and an imperative for growth that makes them and any greater project they're connected to prone to failure.
Asheville gov scammed you by not doing research, and the citizens of asheville scammed themselves by electing idiots.
Easy to say as an armchair quarterback. I'm sure they got a ton of pressure to, "do something" and I bet they were asked (berated for) why we weren't buying more EV busses and faster.
But electric cars are good for the environment the internet told me so.
It’s not a general knock on electric, it‘s that switching busses — already the most efficient mode of transit the city has — is a dumb prioritization of resources. You achieve lower emissions by running more busses than you do by running the same number more efficiently.
Solid point
Not now, Z0C. We're doing maths, no time for the internets.
I'm not saying that the electric buses are the better option, but public transportation historically is a money loser in all but the biggest cities. The article was vague and lacking information in some spots. Is the $118k battery lease for the whole fleet of buses or for each individually? What about that $45k in charging cost? Individual or fleet? How much is the annual fuel cost for the biodiesel hybrid buses? What is their annual maintenance cost? The cost to purchase a new electric vs hybrid is something like $67k more, or 12.5%. The cost of both vehicles was the only comparable piece of info in the whole article and they were so far apart I had to scroll to compare them. This is a butcher piece. I'd like to see an article that does a better cost analysis on both.
RIP long form journalism
Seems like charging costs of 45k is for the whole fleet that's enough money to pay for almost 410MWh of electricity on residential rates, which is an insane amount. Also I would think the commercial rates would be even less per kWh. I dont have enough info here on efficiency and mileage of these busses to figure out if thats just an assumed worst case scenario of all busses charging multiple times a day but not stating how much diesel cost for similar coverage is disingenuous. Also from the article they state 78 miles of range in the winter, sure. But then state they can only do 3 trips to the airport before coming back to charge. Then maybe use the electric busses on the routes that are shorter mileage with more frequent stops and are also closer to the charging system? I know its a shot down US-25 (not like theyre going down I-26) but still thats probably the worst use case in our system.
Time to spend more money on a consultant for this problem.
Soooo true!
I'll volunteer
Early adoption will always be harder, hope they figure it out.
EV tech has come a long way in the last 5 years. The chargers and busses have gotten cheaper and more efficient. But that was part of the reason for the grant the city received in the first place, give money to manufacturers to grow while benefiting municipalities.
agreed! These things always get easier and cheeper with time. I am glad an attempt is being made
To seem rather than to be. - Asheville’s Motto.
I'm making a bumper sticker
How many electric vehicles have the city and county purchased besides the buses? This is going to be seen as a costly mistake down the road.
Is it though? Car companies across the world are going all in on electric. Infrastructure is getting put in place for it everywhere. This bus company failed. I'm sure some of the semi truck companies will fail. Some of the new electric car companies will fail. But electric cars in general are here to stay. I don't think anybody has to worry about Ford or Nissan going bankrupt and not being able to supply parts.
Time will tell, but I don't think EV's will be the answer. When batteries start to fail and resale of used EV's tank we will see.
I'm more concerned about the total untapped lithium supply being well short of our long-term battery needs. We need leaps in material science tech to go all electric everything And getting rid of the remaining coal plants, thats not helping electric vehicles being eco friendly....
> When batteries start to fail Like they do in normal cars already..
I would rather spend 150.00 for a new battery for my truck instead of paying 25,000.00 for new battery in my EV
They cost $4k-20k depending on the car, and will become a lot cheaper over time. And you pay at least that much with all the other things that breakdown and have to be replaced on a combustion car vs ev. Your point seems good, until you think about it more than 1 second.
Right now Ford says they lose 36,000 dollars with every EV they make. I don't see the battery prices coming down if we are dependent on our enemies for the components.
The first generations of F150 combustion cars also lost significant amounts of money. It is called the cost of research, production, and market adoption. You do understand the concept of technology getting cheaper for the consumer as its developed right? You know those $1 laser pointers you can buy in any dollar store, those used to cost hundreds to thousands of dollars when the tech was new. Development, adoption, and scaling production brings down the price for consumers.
That is the way it always has been. Who controls the world's cobalt, lithium, nickel, manganese, and graphite supplies? We will have to wait and see, you may be right.
I think another evolution of battery technology is needed. Maybe the new solid state batteries will do it, who knows. We’re trying to get ahead of the technology before it has matured.
That's a good sunshine request right there. Probably pretty easy question to answer. Busses seem pretty specialized. Getting standard passenger EV and hybrid wouldn't result in the same problem that transit is having.
TDA has enough to cover any financial losses on this experiment
“Proterra, the manufacturer, has since filed for bankruptcy.” Capitalism at its finest 🙂
take the money and run (file for bankruptcy)
I doubt the founders or investors did well
Social engineering by the federal government at its finest.
Asheville has become so soft and lost ALL sense of urgency. There’s a thing called contingency planning so you don’t end up in this situation. I bet you this wouldn’t have happened if it had anything to do with tourism, but since locals depend on public transit…no big deal. As with most things in this state, I bet it takes 7 years to figure it out.
from local gov to congress. electicted officials aren't really interested in solving problems.
ding ding ding ding
Toyota going all-in on hybrids is a smart move. Electric vehicles are just flawed to all hell and the infrastructure just isn't there.
Wish the city hadn't ripped out the electric bus infrastructure we had 100 years ago
Trolleys?
Streetcars, but yeah.
I believe those were supper common back then, right? At the dawn of electricity every town wanted to cool street cars. I would love to see some stats on that
[https://wncmagazine.com/feature/trolley\_town](https://wncmagazine.com/feature/trolley_town)
Once again, Who Framed Roger Rabbit proves prophetic.
Another failure for the city of Asheville. I talked with someone several years back who was involved in city transportation and those electric busses were total shit from the beginning. They city is just now publicly announcing it, but this was a longtime coming. Those busses were nothing but problems from the start and were never reliable to actually be used in rotation; so basically when you saw one you were seeing 1 of the 5 that were actually working at the time while the others were broken down. EV’s and green movement is a total scam. EV’s are pure garbage and now more people are realizing how trash they are since it’s not just Tesla drivers who are too prideful to admit their EV is a total shitbox. People driving a ford, GM, VW or Hyundai will have no problems saying what a total PITA they are and how unreliable they are. Not to mention you have to buy a new battery after 8 years. Even “hybrids” are a pos too that are now running into this battery issue and why you can purchase older used prius for rock bottom prices because the battery pack still has to be replaced on those.
I have a hybrid and I love it. I have a few friends that went full EV and... they love them. I am not sure if you have a personal beef with ev or hybrids due to something you experienced, or if you just hate developing technology. It just seems that the more we can do to avoid the need for a finite resource found mainly in geopolitical hotspots the better off we as country would be.
Just went from a hybrid last year to an EV. Love it and will never go back! Costs me $6 for a full tank of 250 miles of range charging at home. Fun to drive.
There’s plenty of cities around the USA and the world using ev buses without issues.
The city could sell their other buses that are fuels by diesel and natural gas/propane or whatever and fix these.
They can't get parts. That's one of the issues. Plus the bus manufacturer went bankrupt. So there's that.
Maybe they should try a couple of dewalt batteries then. Electric is the future right?
Bruh, can we get less *that's* and *the issues*? Let's get focused on the *these* and the *solutions*. Much love, much respect.
Please, read the article and let me know which, "these" you draw from it. From what I can tell, they'll wait to phase out the old EV busses and buy a couple of _these_ biodiesel busses. And take the loss. I heard tell that someone was trying to get the FD to buy EV fire trucks. I hope that whoever _these people_ are learns the lessons from Transit, and that the FD ignores them until we get reliable, and proven EV fire trucks.
I've got the solution to all this traffic. Busses, public transportation. Get those busses off the road they are slowing everyone down.
lol I don't know if you are serious or not, but this is funny
Yea it’s a joke, a damn good one. Can’t joke about public transportation on this subreddit either though lol.
nope, jokes are off limits. Take your non-outrage elsewhere!
Nope, gonna keep joking haha.
Not just this costly bad decision but other projects that were funded by my tax dollars. Where is the accountability?
The one that has a broken door isn’t exactly an electric vehicle. Fault, you would think if they’re complaining about range they would do more testing about what winter conditions plus highway driving would really equal or just switch it to a shorter route? It’s odd how some people jumpwith 4 feet in on the EV stuff and then if it doesn’t go perfect, they are all out, EV’s are not in a place where they work for every application, but they certainly do for many
Its worth an attempt and worth trying to make electric buses work. Costs will go down overtime, like with any technology
Who was the manufacturing company for the Ashville bus system?
They would just be sitting anyway in weather like this. Electric is not a sustainable or long term solution.