By: Diane Benjamin
At this week’s meeting it was mentioned that Champaign is trying hydrogen buses. It was mentioned Connect Transit might go that direction when they need more buses. Of course that would require different infrastructure.
It would have been a lot easier to keep diesel buses and a lot faster to refuel them. Per the chart below the buses take HOURS to charge and have very limited range. Electric was just a fad that doesn’t work.
See this article, EV’s aren’t in high demand: https://kalkinemedia.com/us/business-news/latest/scotty-kilmer-was-right-the-ev-bubble-is-slowly-deflating
In case you can’t read the chart, 2 buses take 5.5 hours to charge. At 52 degrees the range is 169 miles, at zero is drops to 110 miles. If you see a dead electric bus, please send pics. Keep in mind electric buses are much more expensive than diesel, but the government wouldn’t have provided grants (your money) for diesel.
The job of government isn’t to drive demand with grants. They threw away your money. Some might say they redistributed it to friends who later declared bankruptcy. (Solyndra 2.0)
This information was received by FOIA.
These busses are a manifestation of incompetence in government. Busses with a maximum range of 100 to 160 miles? Busses that require their own unique infrastructure to charge / refuel. Which means that by design the spend most of their service time parked and plugged in? And for this we pay a premium? Seems like cause for termination to me.
And look at that Curb Weight! That’s harder on our streets and roads than cars. Undoubtedly the “owners” of these companies are leftist progressive marxist democrats. That’s why they’re so eager to hand over our tax dollars to them.
The rating scale is backwards for the charger size….the bigger charger is probably more demanding on our power grid. The bus with a smaller charger had reduced points….the charger that demands more power got extra points. I suppose they were trying to give bonus points to the more aggressive charging port….but could that literally “backfire” into an overheating situation where we burn down the whole bus barn?
ESG, Chamber and innovation awards/ scores in sight and so so “good for the area” – great leadership and so so exciting! NOT
what a scam for this area
The whole crooked scam is propped up by the grifter/sellouts appointed to the transit board.
Just looking at who sits on the board tells the whole story of why this shameful waste of tax dollars is allowed to continue.
Blame Darin LaHood for funding
Just wait till they break down and they can’t get parts to fix them!