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2021 Battery-Electric Bus Procurement


Express691

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https://service.ariba.com/Discovery.aw/125032043/aw?awh=r&awssk=9BxdSuo6&awrdt=1#

Summary of what was posted onto the Ariba site: 

6 buses in the base order

  •  ...as was discussed in the March 2019 board meeting), all by Q2 2021

Options for 9 more buses, but by Q4 2021

  • Tight scheduling

Some more pointers:

  • The stop request strips seem to be normal across all bus orders moving forward
  • Same thing for the USB ports
  • If this order (+ options) goes through, Vancouver will have 19 battery-electric buses. This is enough to operate route #100 with electric buses and have a few set aside as a spare ratio.
  • With regards to the 2019 trial, XE40 #19303 seems to have shown the most consistency among the 3 other buses. 
  • The Transit Strike of 2019 may or may not have put a large dent in overall bus maintenance in Hamilton Transit Centre (where these electric buses are kept). I'm led to believe that there is a bigger backlog for units needing larger repairs (19114//major windshield damage comes to mind as it's been sitting at HTC for God knows how long)

The response deadline is February 27, 2019.

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If the fleet does rise to 19, I suspect they will need to increase the number of charging posts, maybe having at least two in each terminal loop. Other cities have much higher ratios of chargers to buses than 1:10.  The risk is, for example, traffic delays cause two buses to arrive in quick succession at Marpole loop. Operationally you would want both buses to get a charge at the same time.

Not sure that the strike would have had that much to do with low turnout, with only 19303 performing regularly. IIRC there were only one or two buses out on any one day even before the strike. Wouldn't the sort of items that have caused problems be specialised items handled by a separate technical team? I'm thinking power control units or specialised software for example. Backlogs of routine items wouldn't have caused the other 3 to be off the road for weeks, would they? This is a star project and I can't imagine that board members would be happy for these buses to be left in a backlog maintenance line.

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Is there room for two Chargers at both ends of the 100 route? They just spent a lot of effort on making 22nd Street station a lot nicer, i don't think they want to rip it up just to create another charger in loop. 

 

Is there room to expand the loop by one extra bus Bay? Or slip the next charger up against the fence? 

 

If i were paying all this money to install a charger and make a loop look nicer, i wouldn't want to rip/tear it up in spots again just to install more stuff.

But hey if it has to be done it's gotta be done!

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It was just a suggestion. It would probably be fairly easy to add one at Marpole loop. What level of disruption at 22nd St? If I recall correctly the existing charging station is back from the actual route 100 departure bay. Perhaps just install another of the posts with the inverted pantograph at the route 100 departure bay. Disruption would just be to dig a trench for a cable from the substation. 

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  • 1 year later...

https://novabus.com/translink-selects-nova-bus-15-electric-buses-lfse-expanding-low-emission-mobility-vancouver-communities/

This is the press release from Novabus

Of note:
-These 15 buses are all the base order. Originally was supposed to be 6 units but we all know what happened.
-These buses are the LFSe+ - they will come equipped with Bae HDS-200

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1 hour ago, Benton Harper said:

I really can't understand the whining and wailing about Nova's from the west coasters, would they prefer BYD, vicinity or nothing?

Vicinity don't have Electric, we don't really want BYD (I don't really want to recall Jackie Chan)~~

Curiously, Proterra didn't join the bid~~

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The problem that I had with the Nova was the ZF transmission, the retarder brake is way too aggressive and jerky. The 2018 Nova's in Vancouver are a lot better, much improved with the BAE system.

The article says that those battery electric Nova's can do about 350 km to 450 km and can charge in 5 minutes at a charging station.

I think something is wrong because that seems a bit much for a fast charging battery bus. The Proterras in Edmonton are slow charging and they do about 350 km on a charge. 

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43 minutes ago, 9924 said:

Because, as a driver, they suck. 

I'm not a driver, but I did try sitting in the driver's seat at a Trans-Expo several years ago, and I recall the BYD being the absolute worst of all. It was so badly designed, other buses like Nova were comparatively much better.

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Wait. Did TransLink not order some additional New Flyer XE40s prior to this?

3 hours ago, Benton Harper said:

I really can't understand the whining and wailing about Nova's from the west coasters, would they prefer BYD, vicinity or nothing?

Well, most of the NovaBuses in our fleet date back to just before the 2010 Olympics. They were the last conventional buses ordered without air conditioning. Some of them were also the last buses to use fabric seats instead of vinyl. I think that and the hot summers since then (and a few of them catching fire even) has given them a bad reputation. (To be fair, the same could also be said for the older New Flyers.)

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1 hour ago, Phillip said:

I think something is wrong because that seems a bit much for a fast charging battery bus. The Proterras in Edmonton are slow charging and they do about 350 km on a charge. 

The LFSe+ is a slow charge bus (3.5h) but can use overhead fast charging to top up.

 

1 hour ago, Benton Harper said:

Vicinity will have it soon enough, but what do you want, and at what cost?

 

Grande West launched their Vicinity Lightning EV this year.

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On 1/26/2021 at 3:35 PM, Benton Harper said:

I really can't understand the whining and wailing about Nova's from the west coasters, would they prefer BYD, vicinity or nothing?

As someone who has lived in Edmonton for 10 years (a city that operated mainly D40LF and D40LFRs when I was living there), moving out to Van and experiencing the older Novas for the first time was disappointing and they never grew on me. To me they are still probably the worst buses in the entire fleet (although the DE60LFRs aren’t necessarily shining stars either) with their garbage ZF transmissions, (the newer buses with ZF seem better, especially the Nova Suburbans and Enviro500s), poor seating arrangement at the rear, and an overall not very pleasant riding experience. That being said, I actually do like our 2018-present Novas and I think New Flyer’s production quality has been going down since their LFR line was introduced, and our rattling Xcelsiors further proves me right. Also, to me the brakes on our XE40s seem kinda rough compared to the LFSes. Again, I did not care much for my ride experience on BYD’s chicken bus (the stop request bell sounds like a chicken) when it was piloting for 4 months (I think) at VTC. I’ve never taken a Vicinity myself but they seem like decent buses that could possibly replace our shuttle fleet in the future whenever they decide to start electrifying the shuttle fleet. However, I doubt that would happen as the shuttle drivers would require the same license as a conventional operator and then there would probably be a big issue regarding shuttle drivers not being paid the same as conventional drivers.

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14 hours ago, 2044 said:

The LFSe+ is a slow charge bus (3.5h) but can use overhead fast charging to top up.

 

Grande West launched their Vicinity Lightning EV this year.

I wonder if the choice of the long range version indicates that the fast charging system is not yet reliable enough to entrust a complete route allocation to. Has anybody had feed back on charging problems? From what I hear about systems, the main problem can be communications between the bus and the charging station.

 

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2 hours ago, martin607 said:

I wonder if the choice of the long range version indicates that the fast charging system is not yet reliable enough to entrust a complete route allocation to. Has anybody had feed back on charging problems? From what I hear about systems, the main problem can be communications between the bus and the charging station.

 

It could also simply be an issue with charging capacity - with only one charger at each end of the route, it might be difficult to coordinate recharging every bus at both ends. Extra battery life would make it easier for a bus to skip charging if there's delays charging other buses, without worrying about it dying mid-route. Just a guess though, but I imagine there's other benefits to longer battery ranges even if fast charging is working perfectly.

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16 hours ago, ThatBusGuy said:

It could also simply be an issue with charging capacity - with only one charger at each end of the route, it might be difficult to coordinate recharging every bus at both ends. Extra battery life would make it easier for a bus to skip charging if there's delays charging other buses, without worrying about it dying mid-route. Just a guess though, but I imagine there's other benefits to longer battery ranges even if fast charging is working perfectly.

Yes, that's true. There's a plan for a third charger but I'm not sure whether it has been ordered yet. Even three chargers wouldn't be enough for a fairly frequent route like the 100 served by 19 buses. Too much risk that delayed buses would cause a queue at the charger.

I wonder whether the order for the depot-charged LFSe+ is a change of plan or if the plan always was for just 4 fast-charging buses for the CUTRIC trial and the rest to be long range battery buses. 

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1 hour ago, martin607 said:

Yes, that's true. There's a plan for a third charger but I'm not sure whether it has been ordered yet. Even three chargers wouldn't be enough for a fairly frequent route like the 100 served by 19 buses. Too much risk that delayed buses would cause a queue at the charger.

I wonder whether the order for the depot-charged LFSe+ is a change of plan or if the plan always was for just 4 fast-charging buses for the CUTRIC trial and the rest to be long range battery buses. 

Wouldn’t it make sense for them to put a charger at every timed stop (bus bays and regular stops like Knight Street Bridge) served by BEBs to alleviate queues for the chargers? At least that way if a bus is late then it wouldn’t have to queue up at a terminus for charging, assuming whichever route the bus is on has a charger somewhere along the route between the termini.

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2 hours ago, 8010 said:

Wouldn’t it make sense for them to put a charger at every timed stop (bus bays and regular stops like Knight Street Bridge) served by BEBs to alleviate queues for the chargers? At least that way if a bus is late then it wouldn’t have to queue up at a terminus for charging, assuming whichever route the bus is on has a charger somewhere along the route between the termini.

Except that AIUI the long-term plan is to move FTN routes away from a strict timetable and move to headway-based scheduling. That would mean less mid-trip dwell/recovery time and thus less opportunity to charge mid-trip.

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2 hours ago, GORDOOM said:

Except that AIUI the long-term plan is to move FTN routes away from a strict timetable and move to headway-based scheduling. That would mean less mid-trip dwell/recovery time and thus less opportunity to charge mid-trip.

So they’re going to have to add additional buses to FTN routes so drivers can get their somewhat-guaranteed breaks and enough time to charge the buses after each trip?

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  • 1 year later...

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