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A new design, yet it still has steps to climb to get in, and a high windscreen.
An ordinary European bus has at most one step for the rear half of the bus, and has a low windscreen so the driver can see children passing in front of the bus. Asian designs are similar.
Example: https://www.mercedes-benz-bus.com/en_DE/models/citaro.html
US school buses have specific design and build requirements.
They are basically the safest vehicles on the road. That being said I’ve seen more modern ones with better front end visibility.
I think that might just be an illusion. The dimensions of a Citaro and a school bus are roughly the same.
It's not about the overall dimensions, note how much lower the floors are (and the driver's seat): https://www.route-one.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Mercede...
Yes, and observe how much higher all the other seats are. It’s not like city buses have super high ceilings compared to school buses. Just the entrance is different. The fundamental difference is that a city bus needs to be wheelchair accessible whereas a school bus does not because specialized buses are deployed when a wheelchair is required. I really don’t understand why you feel one is superior to the other.
1) The driver can see a child standing directly in front of the bus.
2) People with less-than-ideal mobility (obese children, short or very young children, children carrying a heavy bag) don't have to clamber up or down stairs.
See the link, around half the seats are step-free within the bus. That's a city bus configuration, of course it would be adjusted for a bus used only for school transport (no centre door, all seats facing forward etc). Alternatively, keep the centre doors and the child in a wheelchair can then take the normal bus with everyone else and not feel excluded — though this is a significant reduction in capacity assuming you want everyone to have a seat.
I think the main thing you'd want on a school bus, assuming picking up wheelchair users separately isn't a problem, is the lower windshield. It gives you more chance to spot a kid in front of your bus. With the EU models a kid could stand touching the bus and still be visible. Not so much with the nose on the US style bus.
On the one hand, it sure seems like most school buses should only need 100 mi a day or hopefully less. This seems gigantic for the need.
On the other hand, a bus that did have to travel >200mi a day would have emitted proportionally more pollution than a shorter range bus! Targeting longer routes makes sense!
I'm assuming that, like all other EVs, range plummets with the heat running.
This is correct.
Heat for battery in cold climates. Heat and cooling for passengers.
Due to the known schedule of the bus they would be able to pre-heat the battery and cabin.
This makes a lot of sense for school buses that are used for trips, but less so for the majority of school buses. I'd say it'd even be worth it to charter a non-school bus for longer trips.
Where this might make sense is in charging infrastructure for school bus fleets, where they are all on the road for particular parts of the day and all parked for other particular parts of the day. A larger battery would ease scheduling of charging by allowing it to happen only every few days (though the tradeoff being that a larger battery needs longer to charge).
What's the length of a school run though? This could do 75 miles each way, twice a day without charging.
But the bus isn't used for most of the day, so you could realistically halve that range anyway.
And I doubt any bus routes are that long anyway.
And what's with the name mega BEAST? Is it going to get my kids safely to school, or eat them?
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy14osti/60068.pdf (“A Statistical Characterization of School Bus Drive Cycles
Collected via Onboard Logging Systems”)
> Of the over 1,500 individual operating shifts analyzed as part of this study, the average driving distance observed was 31.73 miles, with a maximum observed driving distance of 127.36 miles and a minimum distance of 1.45 miles. Calculating the set standard deviation, sigma was found to be 15.17 miles. Again assuming normality based on the driving distance distribution, a 99.7% confidence interval on route distance was determined and found to be zero to 77.23 miles. Similarly to route duration, doubling the route distance to reflect daily operating distances, it is found that on average school buses travel 73.46 miles, with a 99.7% cutoff on driving distance of 154.46 miles.
That’ll do Beast bus, that’ll do.
I've often wondered why the first use of electric and autonomous driving isn't the courtesy busses at airports.
They don't drive far, they don't drive fast, they run the same route again and again.
I'm not suggesting someone start with LAX, but if you look at San Diego, there is one pick-up point for all car rental locations. I'm not sure if hotels are the same.
As far as electric goes I would imagine that it's is likely due to the fact they run all the time. It's a lot faster to fill them up with fuel than charge them. You would have to keep a spear or two just to rotate while they charge. And even though they don't go far in a single trip, I can see it adding up quickly enough to be an issue. But I bet they start getting replaced soon as the older vehicles reach their end of service life.
As for autonomous vehicles go you would think we would start with trains.
In a place like an airport, since the infrastructure is completely fixed and used every day, it’d be quite easy to do a battery swapping solution. Would potentially be faster than filling gas.
> it’d be quite easy
Is that speculation, or are you a bus mechanic?
Municipal bus lines are keeping spare busses so some can always be charging. And the batteries need to be kept warm (for range) so busses are getting five gallon diesel tank and small diesel engine to warm the coolant which is piped around the batteries.
On a fixed route where one organization owns the place, the sane solution is overhead electric cables.
Overhead cables probably wouldn’t work well at an airport.
> As for autonomous vehicles go you would think we would start with trains.
They run all the "time" but they don't travel far.
Electric vehicles are less restricted by time than by distance.
Could even charge while loading and unloading.
And thinking of the automated rides at disneyland, why can't the bus be automated with mostly just big green and red mushroom buttons.
At 150mph that's a one-hour trip to school and one hour back home. Is the manufacturer a subsidiary of Ferrari, by any chance?
Can't imagine how much this thing weighs. Better hope you don't get hit by one!
> 387 kWh
What does it take to charge that battery overnight?
From empty it would need a 50kw charger to do it in 8 hours. But it’ll never be empty. I use about 10% battery every day and chargers every night.
That's a win for air quality, for one.
Is that with or without fat kids?
Just one of the bus needs to catch on fire before all of those get recalled !!
You are correct. The public have been conditioned to believe that EVs catch fire at a high rate even though the statistics show they are 10 to 20 times less likely to catch fire than an ICE.
In the UK we had a diesel car burn down a car park recently. People were blaming an EV and calling for bans. Then two separate videos showed it was a diesel car (again, just like Liverpool, Stavanger).
There was recently a car ship on fire recently. Again they tried to blame an EV. Later the ship was recovered and the salvage team found all the EVs were on a lower floor and unharmed.
You see it in Facebook comment threads all the time. Old retired people and covid/5G/WEF conspiracy nuts being fed endless videos by the algorithms. Bots spreading it. Any thread even remotely linked to EVs will have multiple “fire” comments.