this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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3 kids in a full size bus near the end of its rural route in sub-zero conditions. Buses aren’t insulated. An EV failure is going to be a problem. Considering how cheap those diesel heaters are it would be a liability concern to not have them.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy14osti/60068.pdf
"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's double distance to cover both before and after school; they have a pause in the middle of the day to charge up again. There are battery buses on the market right now that do 155 miles, which is double all but 0.3% of routes out there. It also takes about an order of magnitude more power to run a motor for an EV than it does to run the heaters. If you get stuck in the snow in an EV at 50% charge, you can likely make it there through the night with the heater running.
The cold is a complete non-issue for this use case.
Why. I mean if the weather is usually fine sure but if you're living on the arctic circle they better be insulated.