Electric Buses
Electric Buses
I’ve been getting some emails and calls from people about a recent article on the City’s purchase of electric buses and how over half of them need replacement parts. Understandably, this causes people to be frustrated and two main questions arise:
1) How did this happen?
2) What happens next?
To answer the first question, we need to go back about 7 years. The City was looking to add more buses to our fleet to help serve our growing population. Diesel buses are what we’ve been using for a long time but electric buses started entering the market. While electric vehicles are becoming more and more prominent, at the time in 2015/2016, it was still fairly new.
Before rushing to purchase a newer technology, a decision was made to test some electric buses and then complete a business case to understand the cost and benefits of purchasing electric buses for Edmonton. The business case is a longer document but you can read it in full using this link. This business case concluded with:
“Based on the information available at the time this report was prepared, MARCON predicts that electric buses used in service in Edmonton can perform as reliably as the rest of the fleet of diesel buses but will require thorough planning, training, and resources to ensure the City of Edmonton derives the full benefits of their use.
Electric buses offer environmental and potential economic benefits. Although important from the start, the environmental benefits for Edmonton will increase over time, as the source of energy used to charge the buses gets cleaner. It is also expected that the economic benefits of using e-buses relative to using the diesel buses will improve in the future as the cost of operating diesel buses will outpace that of e-buses due to diesel fuel price increases, the rising carbon cost and the price of electricity continue to progress at a slower pace as has been the case in the past.”
It was important to have a detailed business case to understand the feasibility of electric buses and after reviewing that business case in detail, I felt comfortable approving a purchase of electric buses independent of how they were being funded. I raise that point around funding because we also received a large portion of funding from both the federal and provincial governments. Even if they hadn’t provided that funding, the business case showed the potential to save approximately 30% in operating costs but being able to offset some of the capital costs made this an even better financial option for our city.
Unfortunately, things have not materialized as expected. While battery technology continues to improve, this first batch of buses did not provide the life that was expected. There is also a need for more maintenance than expected. Many of the buses are able to operate, but instead of a full 8 hours, they usually are operating in split shifts. Thankfully, we have split shifts for ETS so they are used but it’s frustrating that they are limited in when they can be used.
This leads into what is next. As many articles have stated, the company we purchased these buses from is in bankruptcy proceedings. They have failed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the US which does provide the opportunity for keeping the business going while reorganizing their debts. We aren’t the only Canadian city dealing with this but each city will have their own process to go through.
As we are in the middle of legal proceedings, I can’t comment other than to say that our City Administration will be working hard to ensure we continue to get what we paid for and where we haven’t received that, we will work to achieve the appropriate outcomes. One of the stories mentioned that Proterra has announced that certain divisions of its business have been sold pending approval from the courts. We don’t have the specifics but that is a good sign.
A final comment on what is next relates to the recently acquired hydrogen bus. The City of Edmonton and Strathcona County came together to purchase two hydrogen buses, one for each municipality. An important learning from the electric buses is that the pilot will run a much longer time before making any decisions on a larger purchase. This extended pilot can give us more time to see how things work in the winter and what maintenance is required. One of the main lessons I took from the electric buses situation is that a longer test run would have been better.
While there are certainly some challenges we are dealing with, the money has not been wasted. Buses are still operating and serving Edmontonians but not in the way we first thought. Assuming the bankruptcy situation goes smoothly, we can ensure we are getting exactly what we paid for and as some of the articles mention, the electric bus technology continues to get better all the time and so there will still likely be a future where electric buses are used to move people throughout the city.
