Electric charter bus
I subscribe to a YouTube channel called Motorcoach World, which is run by a guy who iworks for a charter company as both a Director of Operations as well as a driver. He's super passionate about busses and has a lot of videos talking about their history and operations.
He's currently trying to do a cross-country trip on a double-decker all-electric bus. The intro video is here, and he's doing most of his daily updates via live stream here.
I've been loosely following along since it's interesting. He's had a lot of issues with charging. Everything from chargers being unaccessible due to use, being down for maintenance/not working, being de-rated to slower speeds, etc. Obviously his issues will be much worse than typical cars due to the needs for a specific charger type and power rating, but I imagine that electric trucks would run into similar issues?
Anyway, thought it was an interesting. He left California about a week ago and as of yesterday, he's made it to Texas.
Talk about niche youtube channels!
Electrify America seems to be causing a lot of issues with a lot of EV owners in addition to this bus. Since this is partially meant to be a PR move, would have been a good idea to have someone go ahead before them to run point and check on chargers, access, etc.
I'm kinda glad that they're not doing that, because it would paint a false picture of the state of long-haul electric vehicle readiness. I figured that they'd run into challenges here and there, but I'm still surprised at how often they've been hampered by busted chargers.
I've heard an astonishing amount of bad things about Electrify America's charging stations. They are either purchasing some terribly poor quality equipment or are simply not repairing them frequently enough.
Thankfully I haven't had much need to use them personally; I've only used them once in all my years of driving an EV.
Interesting. I don't know a ton about the charging landscape. What would drive this bus project to only want to use a specific company's chargers? Is it that they're the only ones with 350kw chargers? Is it the plug itself? Some proprietary charging protocol thing?
It’s probably because Electrify America is the largest charging network in the US that isn’t Tesla. They are the only ones really offering a “cohesive” nationwide charging network that can charge non-Teslas.
Eventually it won’t matter because chargers will be plentiful enough to not require planning to find and you’ll use whatever charger is there.
Unfortunately, this was the thing that pushed me to get a Tesla. I was looking at some other EVs but when I heard about the awful charging network and realized how often I drive to visit family, I knew I only really had one all-electric option. The car itself is simultaneously the best and worst car I've ever owned (not that I've owned many cars). It's got some great stuff but it's too smart for its own good and ends up being dumb. I just want to be able to turn on cruise control and not worry about map data having incorrect speed limits 😭