Cities working to become leaders in clean transportation are electrifying their bus fleets, and learning that the road to success can be a bumpy one.
Cities working to become leaders in clean transportation are electrifying their bus fleets, and learning that the road to success can be a bumpy one.
Hey everyone. Welcome to Thinking Transportation -- conversations about how we get ourselves and the stuff we need from one place to another. I'm Bernie Fette with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. Public transportation agencies in a number of North American cities are working hard to electrify their bus fleets. In theory, switching from diesel to electric seems simple enough, but in practice it's proving to be a challenge. Agencies that are working to become national leaders in clean transportation are learning some tough lessons about the cost of leadership. Here to help us understand why that's the case, i s J ohn O verman, a research scientist at TTI. J ohn, thanks so much for being our guest.
John Overman:Sure. Great to be here.
Bernie Fette:Having looked at all of the information, all the background that you shared with me, I know that we've got a number of specifics that we really ought to touch upon to give this topic due attention. But I was hoping we could start kind of broadly and if I could ask you to give us a big picture look at where we are nationwide in the transition to zero emission bus service. How would you describe things? The state of the industry, et cetera ?
John Overman:Sure. It's as far as battery electric buses and zero emission buses. And we're gonna talk about BEBs today. Yeah. It's not that new anymore. The industry is probably in general, maturing by now. There are thousands of BEBs out there, transit agencies, like maybe more than 6,000 nationwide. And as far as our nation goes, California kinda leads the way. They've got 2, 3,000 probably by now. And of course those are transit buses. They're also an explosion of electric school buses so rapidly too. Okay . But the big difference is that agencies with BEBs now have several years behind 'em of experience and they learned a lot. And they learned you just don't fill 'em up and go. It takes some more planning, electrical infrastructure, route planning, driver training, all kinds of things go into it. I did write down a couple of fun facts here. There's eight metro agencies in Texas and there's about 6,000 buses, transit buses, and we probably have now three...
Bernie Fette:Is that 6,000 battery electrics?
John Overman:No, these are just regular old buses, but we've probably got about 300 electric buses, battery electric buses in Texas by now.
Bernie Fette:What's the ratio there? I was gonna ask you nationally and in Texas, just to give us a sense here, 6,000.
John Overman:Yeah. I would guess we're approaching that 10 percent of fleets, but depends on, you know, it's basically a lot in California that just dominates the market 'cause they have legislation and stuff. That's why. But they're gaining ground in Texas too.
Bernie Fette:Okay. Once again, from a nationwide perspective, Congress passed the Infrastructure and Investment and Jobs Act a couple of years ago. Can you help us understand how battery electric bus service fits into that legislation and fits into the funding picture?
John Overman:Sure. Well, it comes down to money and incentives . So the IIJA gave the capacity for FTA Federal Transit Administration to fund what's called the low-no program. That's just one of 'em that provides funding battery electric buses or zero-emission buses. And the IIJA and the , the low no program is about 6 billion. That's billion with a B over five years. And we're in year about three right now. So that's close to a billion dollars a year. And that's a lot of money. And just as an aside, the EPA is also funding electric school buses to the tune of about a billion dollars a year. And that's in maybe year two or three. So it's a , it's a lot of money. So what did IIJA do? It gave us the money for transit agencies to procure BEBs.
Bernie Fette:Okay. We're talking about a transition from diesel to battery electric. I was wondering if we have any historical parallels to draw from for insight. We've got, of course, steam and horse-drawn service back in the early 1800s. Cable cars in the late 1800s. Buses come onto the scene in the 1900s as street cars become less prevalent. Are those transitions or any others that you can think of relevant to this discussion?
John Overman:Well, the one in most recent history I'd probably point to is back in the 2000s, maybe 2010s that range in there. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> when a lot of the fleets were transitioning from diesel to CNG. So you're really talking not a huge change in energy , uh, supply or uh , fuel, but you're transitioning how you propel your vehicles. Your buses,
Bernie Fette:I'm sorry, when you say CNG, that's compressed natural
John Overman:I'm sorry. Compressed natural gas.
Bernie Fette:Okay.
John Overman:Yeah. So when they transition from diesel to CNG, we work with several agencies in Texas and basically it came down to money. And there , there are a lot of CNG buses on the road. So diesel prices, traditionally volatile, prices go up, go down. It's hard to predict and being able
Bernie Fette:It's like gasoline.
John Overman:Yes. Very much like gasoline. And that's difficult on agencies to do long-term planning. It's difficult on any energy dependent type of business if the price is going up, if you remain supply. But in the end, a lot of agencies transitioned to compressed natural gas for a lot of reasons. One, it was cleaner than diesel and there were some environmental incentives for that. It was more price stable. So if you look at the price of CNG over time, it may gradually climb, but it's fairly even slope . It's less expensive in many region. 'cause right now we have an abundance in natural gas. Now that's an oversimplification, but that was kind of it. CNG is , it's not zero-emission, it is A GHG or greenhouse gas emitter. But it generates cleaner when it compared to diesel. That was kind of a similar type of situation where we're changing the energy we put in to run the buses and the vehicles. And electricity is a pretty stable price curve too. Or it's not even a curve. It's fairly flat increases slightly. So that's the advantage there. It's not a volatile energy source.
Bernie Fette:And the transition from diesel to compressed natural gas, is that a transition that as we speak today is continuing? Is the number of CNG buses growing as the number of diesel buses declines?
John Overman:I think that depends on where you are in the country. There are still a lot of CNG fleets out there and I worked on procurements recently where you can get a fairly clean, I say clean as it can be. It's not zero-emission CNG bus to replace diesel. And you're seeing agencies still do that because of the economics.
Bernie Fette:So there are economic advantages to the switch to CNG?
John Overman:Yes. Yes. That's not true in all situations. But in general, just because of price stability and abundance of supply, what region, the country you're in, you can enter into long-term contracts with CNG. Not to name agencies, but there's one in Texas who did like a 10, 15, 20 year procurement agreement. So they basically have a supply similar to what a lot of airlines do when they buy years and years worth of jet fuel. Okay . When the agencies bought years and years worth of CNG at a low price.
Bernie Fette:What would you say are the main lessons that we can draw from those transitions that we've been talking about? Those historical parallels?
John Overman:You gotta do your homework and it's more about it than just filling up and going. You're not just switching out one for one. So you go from underground storage tanks full of diesel, the next step you go, okay, we're gonna use CNG. Well, you don't put those in underground storage tanks. You probably have a gas compressor. You have to build the infrastructure to compress the gas. It comes in off a pipeline. So similar to how you would bring in a electrical line and need some more electrical energy for a battery electric bus. You know, back in those days, you might have to bring in some extra capacity or a pipeline in for your natural gas, compress it and then deliver it to the bus. So infrastructure, cost planning in advance. How can you fit these buses into that route? Or do you change your routes up so you can fuel and do those kinds of things. So , uh, those are the lessons. Be ready. Plan way in advance.
Bernie Fette:Okay. Let's talk a little bit about the challenges of the transition to battery electric buses. I'm hoping maybe we can run through those in some detail. Not too extensive, just so that we cover the major ones. Starting with just getting the buses. Some of the companies that were building battery electric buses got into trouble financially up to and including bankruptcy. Other companies are doing okay. What are your thoughts on the industry's capacity to build battery electric buses at a scale and a pace that meets expectations or timelines that might be pretty ambitious?
John Overman:It's been challenging for some of the buses that there wasn't enough market . So there was a manufacturer who decided we can't sell enough buses here. We're moving out. And they stayed in Canada. There was another coming just size , look, we've got enough going on other places. The battery electric bus market is not for us. Then you mentioned the one that went bankrupt. They were innovative. One of the first on the scene and they went public is what's called a SPAC, a special purpose acquisition company. And you don't see much of those kinds of rollouts, you know, people buying stock and stuff. And they had some financing and supply chain issues, but they made a go of it, but it just didn't stick. They went into bankruptcy and split the business up and they still, I think, make buses. One of the parts of the company does and sold off the battery part . 'cause that's still a big part of business. If you make batteries, that's a good thing. You've got lots of market for that. But a couple of the manufacturers, not to oversimplify the ones that have been here a long time, they're fairly well established and been selling buses to the transit agencies for, gosh, 50 years, maybe a long time. They're still here. They may have been a little bit slower to enter the battery electric bus market, but they're in the game now. They made their partnerships. 'cause this building a battery electric bus is not like building your traditional ICE internal combustion engine bus. You've got, you know, electric motors, you don't have internal combustion engine. You've got batteries that you know account for. You know , as far as the cost of the production, probably 30, maybe even 60 percent. I'd have to look that up. But a lot. And they weigh a lot more. Mm-Hmm . They're just different. It's not too unlike the transition to electric vehicles as far as cars, it is probably be more complicated. But , uh, I don't know if that quite captured everything, but it's been a challenging year. So now there's probably two to three where there might have been four to five choices before. As far as OEMs, original manufacturers.
Bernie Fette:And the OEMs that have been around longer, more well established . Perhaps were just in a better position to weather the slow path or, or sustain on a slow path to profitability.
John Overman:You know, I really don't know that I'd probably a different business. I could predict that, but I think they were probably more cautious entering the market. They had, you know, traditional stuff and that's taking a risk. You're basically building an entire new product.
Bernie Fette:Well, and I'm glad that you mentioned the difference in the vehicles too, because it goes way beyond just the energy source.
John Overman:Yes, yes.
Bernie Fette:And that's something I think a lot of us, certainly I can speak only for myself, but a lot of us perhaps don't really understand about those differences.
John Overman:Um , some people have referred to it as rolling computers. So <laugh> it's Yeah . If it's so electrified, it's not the same. It's just not the same. Yeah .
Bernie Fette:Once you do have the buses in transit agency fleets, is it true that the battery electrics require more attention? That they're not as reliable as diesel buses? Or have I been reading bad information there?
John Overman:Well, no, it's not bad information. But when you say the word reliable and how you measure reliability, there's different ways to do it. One of the measures we use, and this is also a common metric that the transit agencies use, is what we call percent availability. So what percent of the time is that bus available to go into service? Okay. And what we found and looked at other literature and talked a lot of different transit agencies and found that, for instance, if you have a diesel bus, A , B , C , and G, they're in that range of 85-90 percent availability, meaning you bought it and you can use it 90 percent of the time for whatever reason . It's not downtime. Things like that. Which is good. You know, then if you look on the BEB side, their percent of availability is probably about 70 percent of the time. And it varies widely because once again, when you're talking about internal combustion engines and diesel, they've been around for a hundred years. <laugh> . Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> , it's been around a long time. So, you know, seventy's not too bad. It depends on how you measure it, but yeah, percent availability is slightly lower.
Bernie Fette:And doesn't it depend also on where you measure it? I'm thinking specifically about how the batteries behave in really cold weather.
John Overman:Well, that is true too. They don't have a wonderful track record and cold weather. And that goes to the part of, you know, I always say something like , don't put yourself in a position to fail. You have to fit the bus to the conditions it operates optimally on. Okay . So, and you wanna keep an eye on all the , the data. So if you see, yes, we had a situation where , uh, in a traditional bus where the air conditioners we're using a lot of , making a lot of noise, let's say. Okay. And so they'd rev up all the engines and cool down the buses and it turned out they're just wasting fuel because it really didn't. So it's another way of, you know, the diesel bus might've been inefficient in that. Well, electric buses are efficient in some ways and not so much when it comes to the cold weather. Okay . It has to do with the battery.
Bernie Fette:Staying on the topic of batteries, I know that one of the things we hear a lot about with electrification of cars and trucks is the issue of recharging. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> , I'm guessing the same, at least to some degree is true for buses.
John Overman:Uh , sure.
Bernie Fette:The questions of range and how that range may limit the routes that buses need to cover.
John Overman:Well, the range has improved dramatically on, okay , the battery electric buses. So early days, I guess , uh, 13, 14, maybe even 10, 11, very early days , a battery bus range was in the, it might have been 20, 30, 50 miles would've been a lot. And they charged more frequently. You heard me right, that that would've been like 2014, 2015, 17...
Bernie Fette:Ten years ago.
John Overman:Barely 10 years ago. So in the last 10 years, the prices of batteries have fallen dramatically, probably, gosh, at least by half. And they've improved by double, triple. So now the new battery electric bus has a range of 2 to 300 miles. Okay. So that covers a lot of different kinds of routes and duty cycles. So come a long way.
Bernie Fette:So the batteries are cheaper and better.
John Overman:Yes.
Bernie Fette:We don't get to experience many parallels like that in any aspect of life, do we?
John Overman:Well, that's how new this is. Once again, diesels and CNGs, internal combustion, it's a hundred years old. There's been time to refine and the technology to catch up. Okay. And it makes big difference in battery instance , their grid is kind of new. Yeah . It , it took some time, but they've gotten better real quickly.
Bernie Fette:On the recharging and the range issue related to that, then there's the, the power grid.
John Overman:Yes. And the key to that, just like in the previous example of the compressed natural gas, how you had to have your gas compressors or pipeline or truck or whatever the infrastructure there to fuel. The same thing goes with the electric buses. You have the grid now, you just can't plop a bus down to charge it next to your house <laugh>. And , uh, you have to have the, the power and the lines and the capacity electrical energy capacity at that location. So you have to plan, plan, plan. So if you know how many buses you're gonna have, how much energy it takes to charge 'em , you're gonna need no , you have a supply line that can meet that demand. And that's the key is you have to plan this in advance. So you need your infrastructure in place as far as electrical energy, transmission lines, transformers, months, if not years in advance of a delivery of a battery electric bus. In fact, I heard an anecdotal story of course, that one of the manufacturers says , we won't even deliver you a bus unless you've got your chargers and everything in place and ready to go. 'cause it's not good. But even then, once you order a bus, it's gonna take you a while to get it. It . Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> it might take one to two years just to get it. It's , it's not like you go to the the transit bus lot and I want that one. It doesn't quite work that way. Takes a while to build these things .
Bernie Fette:You don't get to buy one of those like you might buy your F-150. Right? I'll take the blue one.
John Overman:Yeah, no , absolutely not.
Bernie Fette:Staying on the parallel with cars and trucks, there's also the issue of the cost of the bus itself. Transit agencies have to cover those costs in the course of providing their service. Is it possible that transit users, passengers are gonna see increases in the cost of a bus pass?
John Overman:I would rather doubt it because your bus is pretty much a capital cost. I could see it, but I haven't heard of it. The cost of an electric battery, electric bus is give or take, once again there's ranges. You're almost twice that of a internal combustion like a CNG or a diesel.
Bernie Fette:So why is it that the cost of riding on the bus doesn't go up with that kind of a differential?
John Overman:Uh , because that's independent what your ridership will accept. Okay . So there is a direct relationship between raising fares and your ridership coming out of covid and in covid 2020 ridership just tanked. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . And so they're just now getting market share. I guess you could always say you're gonna get a nicer ride now on electric bus 'cause it's somewhat quieter than the diesels. But we like to compare what it comes to cost. It's not just your capital costs , it's your total cost of ownership. So if you take into account that a battery electric bus is more energy efficient mm-Hmm <affirmative> . And you take that cost and amortize over let's say 10 years, your typical life of a bus or a traditional bus is 12 years, 12 to 15. You might have to rebuild it once in a while, but if you take your total cost of ownership over several years, in many cases the battery electric bus will exceed or is favorable to a internal combustion engine bus. That's an oversimplification. It depends on the fleet, depends on your maintenance cost , depends on lots of different things you put in. Plus the fact the battery electric bus is emission free . So do we wanna put a price on all the emissions we're saving? In some places you do. So you have to look at the total cost of owning that bus and it might be cheaper.
Bernie Fette:Well, and I think that's a good segue to where I wanted to go next with this conversation, which is the advantages for battery electric buses, at least some transit agencies think that extra cost , these transition challenges I guess we might say are worth going through in light of the advantages that come with operating these kinds of buses. Can you talk a little about the advantages?
John Overman:Well, the number one advantage is it's zero emissions. And that means not just your volatile organic compounds, not just your ozone precursors, but mainly it's decarbonizing your fleet. You're getting rid of the GHG , the great greenhouse gas emissions. And it's not just in a few places you're gonna see it spread. At least I'm seeing it spread. If you were to ask somebody five, 10 years ago, what's the the efforts to reduce greenhouse gases? And it's much more prevalent now. It's in legislation, California, they're basically eliminating for their heavy duty vehicles, not diesel. They're eliminating the carbon part of that footprint. So they're requiring heavy duty vehicles, buses, trucks to go zero emission. And like a lot of things that happen in California, it tends to spread <laugh> as far as they're a little bit of ahead of the curve. So a lot of other states on either coast and some in the west are wanting to say, no, we're going to decarbonize our fleet. We're gonna lower our greenhouse gas footprint. And so I don't know if it directly speaks to that, but you're gonna see it because they want it and the communities they work in are asking for it .
Bernie Fette:Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> , you mentioned California a couple of times and then there's also places like Austin, Broward County, Florida, Edmonton, Canada, that have been out front in this regard. But are there a lot of other transit agencies out there that are simply waiting to see what lessons are learned before they make a huge investment? Am I reading that correctly?
John Overman:I think you are to a point. I think there are some that are waiting. But when you look at if I'm gonna buy a new bus or I need to start replacing, 'cause it's , here's another aspect, you just don't go out and buy it. I need 10 new buses. Nobody can afford that right off the bat. You have to stage 'em. You know, you like two buses this year. Two buses, the next MM-Hmm <affirmative> . And you have the incentives from like IIJA where they might pay 80 percent of the cost of the bus. You know, now's the time to act. That's what the incentives do. I also see a lot of smaller and mid-size, sticking their toe in the water, says, well I'm not gonna replace my feet and go totally zero, but I sure wanna do that one in downtown where I can run that electric bus and try it. So I think some are waiting, some are just sticking their toe in the water. But I think all of them see the eventuality that that's the way it's going to go. Maybe not entirely, you're not entirely fleet, but you're certainly gonna mix in your fleet some zero emission bus fleets . And that's where the incentives are.
Bernie Fette:Do we have any overseas comparisons that we can draw from? Any lessons that we're learned that can be applied in this country?
John Overman:There probably are. You know, if you look at China, far and away has the most battery electric buses as far as quantity goes. They have a lot
Bernie Fette:Along with some pretty lousy air quality at the same time. Right.
John Overman:Yeah. And maybe that's why they put so many battery electric buses out there. They're the probably had the most in the first on the European continent's. Probably Germany has the most electric buses or is incentivizing the most. But Germany, China, those are two totally different markets. And I don't know if you can relate them necessarily to the US market. So if you look at the lessons from around the globe, and if you look at the lessons from the United States, we kinda look at California since they have so many. And California's like the , what, seventh largest economy in the world. And Texas is number eight. We have a lot to learn from here. And the good thing is, is we're doing that. There's a AC Transits in the , the Oakland, the Bay Area. It's Alameda County. They're the third largest transit agency in the country. And they have done a great job. They've used lots of electric buses, fuel cell, electric buses. They've documented what they do, they share their experiences. So the industry is small in a way that we look to each other as far as how we do things and share experiences. So yes, there's lessons overseas, but we gotta deal with the infrastructure and the manufacturers we have because part of buying American buses, it has to be what, 70 percent? There's a Buy America requirement for an electric bus . Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> for any bus. Okay .
Bernie Fette:So do you see a day when the vast majority of transit buses in American cities are running on batteries only?
John Overman:I see a dominance in certain areas and settings where they're appropriate. May sound corny. The first electric bus deployment I worked on was in a downtown circulator. And it seemed to work pretty good. I think you're gonna see more and more, you have to be careful when you transition entire fleet. It's okay. One of the things that came up early on is when you have a natural disaster and you need to evacuate, you don't have charging stations on the way outta town. Always that'll fast charge a bus. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> you , you might see San Antonio send buses down to Houston to help with evacuation or Austin. It's gonna be difficult to run an electric bus down there and run it back out. So I , I think you're still gonna see certain parts of the fleet for certain applications. It's not right everywhere right now, but you're gonna see it grow because that's the way the market's headed. I think, you know, reducing GHGs and the communities they serve and that's a big part of what transit is, is serving the community and that's demanded of their legislators, their communities. That's what happens.
Bernie Fette:And it sounds like the same answer to one of the questions I had for you earlier, whenever your response was, well, it depends on where we're talking about.
John Overman:<laugh>. That is true. That is true. Okay . They're not gonna be right everywhere. Just like any new technology. You're familiar with the technology curve, you know, you have the early adopters. Yes . Well I think we're probably at the steepest part of the early adopters. We're getting ready to cross that hump. And so, you know, there are early adopters. I was a late adopter to my Apple watch and maybe my iPhone, but by golly I wouldn't do without 'em now <laugh> . Right,
Bernie Fette:Right. Last question. What is it that motivates you to keep showing up to work every day ?
John Overman:Oh gosh. That , that's a good one. I enjoy it. You know, I'd say I enjoy about 80 percent of what I do. You know, and that's pretty darn good. It is . You know, there's, yeah. If you know , working with people trying to help solve some situations and you learn, you know, I think the secret to it or not the secret, the magic sauce is working at TTI. You're learning something every day. 'cause you have to study it and technology transfer is part of it. So that's fun. If there's a simple answer, that would be it . Yeah. Plus, I don't have a 30-mile commute and that's great.
Bernie Fette:Okay. <laugh> , we've been visiting with John Overman, research scientist at TTI, helping us understand the state of affairs with the transition towards zero emission bus service. Thanks so much for sharing your time, John, and your perspectives. We are most grateful to you.
John Overman:You're quite welcome. I enjoyed it.
Bernie Fette:With several years of experience behind them. Transit agencies in many cities are learning how to incorporate battery electric buses into their fleets. The challenges are better understood and the advantages are becoming more clear as well. Just as we have seen with electric cars and trucks, there are lessons to be learned and adjustments to be made for any agency that hopes to jump on the battery powered bandwagon. Thanks for listening. Please take just a minute to give us a review, subscribe and share this episode, and please join us next time for another conversation about getting ourselves and the stuff we need from point A to point B. Making Transportation is a production of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, a member of the Texas A&M University System. The show is edited and produced by Chris Pourteau I'm your writer and host, Bernie Fette. Thanks again for joining us. We'll see you next time.