Posted on 07/17/2021 7:38:43 PM PDT by Hojczyk
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is one of the deep-blue cities that’s been priding itself in leading the charge against climate change for years now. Back in 2016, they decided to establish a position as an early adopter of electric vehicle technology on a large scale to reduce their carbon footprint.
The city purchased 25 electric buses from a company called Protera at a staggering price tag of nearly one million dollars apiece and put them into operation. But barely four years later, every one of the buses had been pulled from service and is deemed unusable. What went so horribly wrong to produce such a result? As the Free Beacon reports this week, just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
More than two dozen electric Proterra buses first unveiled by the city of Philadelphia in 2016 are already out of operation, according to a WHYY investigation.
The entire fleet of Proterra buses was removed from the roads by SEPTA, the city’s transit authority, in February 2020 due to both structural and logistical problems—the weight of the powerful battery was cracking the vehicles’ chassis, and the battery life was insufficient for the city’s bus routes. The city raised the issues with Proterra, which failed to adequately address the city’s concerns.
The city paid $24 million for the 25 new Proterra buses, subsidized in part by a $2.6 million federal grant.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
What else is happening?
U.S. Postal Service Awards Contract to Launch Multi-Billion-Dollar Modernization of Postal Delivery Vehicle Fleet
So the plan went as ‘planned.’
I would love to know which politician had their fingers in the bus manufacturing company.
Seller knows there are other fools out there .... one born and elected every minute.
How much of the $24 million was kicked back to Philly Dem politicians?
the weight of the powerful battery was cracking the vehicles’ chassis, and the battery life was insufficient for the city’s bus routes.
No one saw that coming?>>> the cities buss routes are pretty idiotic. They still run the routes of all the consolidated lines from the 50’s. On market street, where there is a subway and trolley under the road, there are about 11 bus routes.
When i was a kid we had trolly cars. They ran on electricity and tracks that were laid in the roads.
There was a trolley line that ran vehicles that looked like those commonly seen in 1950’s when I was last in Philly.
I initially thought the post was referring to these.
Atlanta did, as well, until the Civil Rights movement destroyed it. The last electric buses ran in 1963.
“They still run the routes of all the consolidated lines from the 50’s.”
When the DC subway was put into service, many bus routes were changed to feed into the subway. Many people had to pay more to commute even after credits and transfers.
The Atlanta system at one time operated in a fashion to avoid this. A bus would pull into a restricted area, one would transfer to & ride the subway without paying more, and one could the catch another bus in another restricted area without paying more.
Those buses had a lot of copper that was sold for scrap. Who would notice, right?
So, how much electricity did that boondoggle waste?
San Francisco has had electric buses since I was a kid. They're powered by overhead lines.
“the weight of the powerful battery was cracking the vehicles’ chassis”
Having lived in a city run by Democrats while in college, I can think of another possible reason for the cracking.
My mom hated the potholes in Baltimore.
“San Francisco has had electric buses since I was a kid. They’re powered by overhead lines.” Those are not BUSES. They are Trolleys. They are NOT battery Powered. Sheesh.
“Within two years, [Frank J.] Sprague had contracts to construct 113 street rail systems, and the within a decade horse-drawn streetcars had virtually disappeared from America’s cities, replaced by an estimated 13,000 miles of urban streetcar tracks.”
https://www.nndb.com/people/904/000173385/
“In addition to revolutionizing urban rail systems, Sprague made key improvements to elevator technology.”
“The Boston area had electric buses that ran off an overhead catenary.”
Detroit had the same thing when I was growing up until they were replaced by Diesel buses. Most of the downtown area was cris-crossed with overhead wires. Each bus had a frame on top that connected to the wires. No batteries required.
Fully electric vehicles are stupid. Hybrids make a lot more sense because they can charge as they go and don’t require an unreliable, expensive power grid to charge them.
And then after WWII GM introduced City Buses.
“I realized places like Philadelphia and Chicago are really not so different at all from South Africa”
The pictures made it look like South Africa was a more pleasant place, which made the destruction even more shocking.
A standard city bus normally costs around $400,000. Making it hybrid adds about $100,000.
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