I was baptized about electric vehicles earlier than most. My late father designed and developed – and holds the patents on – 11 zinc-bromine batteries developed for Exxon Corporation (Google “patents, Harry Einstein”) – effectively the precursor to the fuel cell, a promising technology well-developed 35 years ago, deployed in buses in limited application and, for no apparent reason, forgotten. Jet Propulsion Laboratories had a pure-hydrogen fuel cell fully developed in the late 1980s. And Thousand Palms, California, was deploying a fuel-cell-powered transit bus when Dick Cromwell was the general manager of the City’s transit district and the Chairman of the school board. Then nothing.
Thanks largely to my father’s contacts, I experienced some disturbing developments in the early 1990s – developments that went nowhere:
- A top technical official from Northrop in favor of it was shot down by his upper management regarding a trade deal I developed for my former bus-manufacturing partner, TAM-BUS, whereby we would provide Northrop Corporation with access to our 55-nation market in exchange for its sale, to us, of its carbon fiber vehicle envelope. We later learned that we could have bought one from Neoplan for $240,000 – but that opportunity slipped away with TAM-USA’s failure in the North American market after Yugoslavia collapsed. With new democracy Slovenia’s bankers and elected officials all educated in U.S. colleges, TAM-BUS took the last 30 sets of engines and transmissions we purchased with funds from a U.S. bank (a loan which the Slovene government cleverly “covered”) – curtailing our second set of 30 motorcoaches sold, and effectively ending TAM-USA, as TAM-BUS was carved up and sold in 1000 pieces by Slovene moguls and entrepreneurs just thrilled with the freedom that democracy offered them. Our plans to eventually create an electric vehicle died in those ashes.
- In 1991, I attended a huge fuel cell conference in Phoenix with my father’s boss, Patrick Grimes, the head of Exxon’s Battery Division. It is probably an underestimate to state that at least 90 percent of the participant were Japanese. (Japan has zero petroleum surrounding it). The few hundred Americans attending apparently did little or nothing to further the bold ideas that exploded at that conference. (Over the years, I managed to lose the 300-page Proceedings from that Conference.)
- Also with Mr. Grimes, I attended a huge “automobile exhibition” in the Coliseum in Los Angeles. Exponentially more knowledgeable about such things as me, we walked around, booth to booth, asking electric car manufacturers with prototypes about their technology – with Pat mostly asking the same three or four questions. I recall him walking away from one chat muttering that the energy it would take that vehicle to run could light up a medium-sized City. I think of those conversations now as New York City is slowing filling up with electric vehicles, yet does not have the energy to support the thousands of overbuilt skyscrapers and other tall buildings constructed over the past 20 years on speculation – traffic be damned, since transit has been failing for the past 45 years. At least these million dollar units are being occupied by homeless residents, keeping many of Manhattan’s main streets more free of tents.
- At least 30 years ago, at a schoolbus conference, I saw an electric Thomas bus outfitted with scores of lead acid batteries. One engineer with whom I spoke told me that Thomas spent $85M developing it. (With a little help, I could have designed this vehicle in my back yard.) I asked him why he would add so many batteries to a vehicle envelope with a massive frame rail chassis and steel sidewalls and frame members when a carbon fiber vehicle would need far fewer batteries. He told me that this is the only format that schoolbus purchasers would accept. I knew he was right from the experiences of failing to sell a single TAM schoolbus – whose prototypes were painted a different color, the stop arm and flashers removed, and deployed, almost non-stop, in a motorcoach duty cycle for about 20 years by the clever motorcoach operator who purchased them.
In short, for most of the past 35 years, the electric vehicle industry was a clown show. Update to the present – when we are at least developing a network of charging stations, and electric vehicles are selling to the wealthy and Middle Class – at least before our next administration slaps tariffs on most of them – allegedly 60 percent on Chinese vehicles. (Half of all Teslas are currently manufactured in China). Again, update to the present, and focus on a typical, small, Midwest town with a tiny fleet of schoolbuses.
Electric Vehicles in the School Bus World
A tiny school in Nebraska, with a need to replace a beat-up, 1999 schoolbus, recently got a new one – completely free via a Federal grant (see “In Tiny Wymore, Nebraska, a sleek new battery-powered schoolbus became a Rorschach test of the future,” New York Times). The problem this small community faced was the fact that this much-larger, brand new bus was powered by electricity. Everyone from the town’s school superintendent to the students riding it (eventually) loved it. Some of the latter noted the engine’s whirr made them think of riding in a UFO. At the same time, this vehicle frightened this town of 1300 residents – exposing fears of a future with wind turbines, power from solar farms in other states, and electric cars stranded on gravel roads. One resident, who felt this future would jeopardize his 40-acre salvage farm funded by used spare parts from “muscle cars,” said, “We’ll fight it tooth and nail.”
An old railroad town, once alive with hotels, restaurants and music halls, was now a pass-through, as cars whizzed by on Highway 77 without stopping. The town’s roads were still paved with bricks. And there were huge gaps where buildings used to stand. Otherwise, “the car became king” (New York Times). In the 1980s, the old train depot was burned down as a firefighting exercise. The new school bus was hardly welcomed by the vast majority of residents, many of whom were farmers, and some of who dreamed of someday owning their own salvage yards. This poor community managed to stay afloat by finding grants to fund everything from weight room equipment to programs to teach welding – and a few enlightened town officials saved thousands by switching to everything from LED lighting to weatherizing windows.
When it considered the new electric school bus (a new diesel bus would have cost about $120,000), the school board was told that it could save $11,000 a year on maintenance (quoting an article in School Bus Fleet). And the battery came with a 10-year warranty. Since the bus was free, no vote on obtaining it was needed by the school board. But the idea did not sound practical to a number of officials tracking the latest farming techniques. The notion of dead-heading one’s tractor – driven at less than 10 mph all day long – home every night to charge it troubled one of the board members. For similar reasons, this community voted against building a wind farm – and modifications in legislation were gradually created to make doing so nearly impossible. Many worried about digging up the cement when all these turbines wore out in 35 years.
Regarding the bus, some felt that old vehicles stripped of their parts make great storage sheds. And the components could be recycled. But no one in town had the expertise to do this with an electric school bus. Plus the grant actually required the destruction of the former bus’s diesel engine – so it would have to be hauled to a junkyard 100 miles away with the technology to punch a hole through the engine block. Many wondered what they could do with this new bus in 20 years.
The town’s lone owner of an electric car – a Navy veteran who had studied electronics — commented that renewable energy is cheaper than other forms of energy. Yet others worried what would happen when the new bus would lose its charge – stranding dozens of students miles from a charging station. To assuage his curiosity, another school board member attended a school bus conference where an electric vehicle was on display. Peering beneath it, he immediately became concerned about all the wires and cables below – when this bus would cruise down the roads in and around their town through the mud and manure, and get salt all over it. The town’s fire chief began thinking of the worst-case fire-fighting scenarios with an electric bus full of children. He had heard that lithium battery fires were hard to put out. Another concern was the electrocution of rescuers who might have to cut into the bus.
On the launch day of the new bus, nothing happened: The bus would not charge. The school had to send it to Colorado for repairs. (One can only wonder about the disruption to perhaps hundreds of students whose rides had to be re-scheduled since the town now had one fewer bus.) The repair took months. When winter came, the few diesel buses parked outside were already difficult to start. School officials began to read that E.V. batteriers could struggle in cold weather. Plus, the bus could only travel 120 miles on a charge.
In March, the bus finally arrived. To allay the town’s fears, it was driven onto the edge of town, But the first day, many of the children accustomed to hearing their bus approach from a few blocks away as the cue to step outside to meet it heard nothing, since the bus was so quiet – and missed it. This problem was soon solved days later as the driver was told to honk constantly – at first, alarming everyone along the route other than the few students who scurried outside to meet it.
At this point, the bus had proven itself – within the constraints noted – and it sits happily alongside the schools remaining diesel buses. And at dusk, residents can see the twinkling lights on the horizon from a wind farm across the state line in Kansas. As a final comment, one resident said, ”It’s annoying, but you get used to it.”
This parable it not meant to persuade or dissuade anyone from accepting and adopting to new technology, especially when it is free. But it does point out that introducing 21st Century technology to much of America mired in the 1960s will involve a challenge.
Electric transit buses will face far fewer of the same challenges, will operate in smaller service areas saturated with charging stations, and replete with facilities and experts who can maintain them. Yet they still face challenges –as in New York City, where one city official told me that no amount of wind turbines could conceivably power the number of skyscrapers and overbuilt tall office buildings and condos filling Manhattan and, slowly encroaching into most of the City’s other boroughs. In a face-off between a thousand mini-rump-styled developer tycoons, where would transit stand in its efforts to get its much-needed share of this energy?
The next installment will not resolve this particular issue. But it will provide considerable information about the benefits and challenges of electric vehicles deployed in even the most sensible of operating environments.
