A company by the name of Proterra has shown the world that electric busses are ready for the next step of replacing current technologies. On a single charge, the bus, named the Catalyst E2 Max, managed to travel up to 1,772.2km on a single charge. The bus, of course, packed a whopping 660kWh of storage which is equivalent to 7.8 Tesla Model S.
The trip was recorded at the Navistar Proving Grounds in Indiana, USA and this really changes how the industry should see electric buses as the future. First of all, normally a bus wouldn’t need to travel more than 1,000km in a day which leaves plenty of room in case the bus is stuck in traffic or carrying a full load of passengers. The second factor is how long would it need to fully charge the bus because in order to make operations efficient, technically the bus should be constantly plying its route, gaining revenue as it picks up passengers.
Proterra has revealed that there are fast chargers available and using it would take the buses slightly more than an hour to get it fully charged. With technologies like this available, this should help regulators and city councils think about getting the bus companies to replace their ageing fleet of internal combustion buses and replacing them with electric buses instead.
“Driven by the best cost savings-per-mile, we believe the business case for heavy-duty electric buses is superior to all other applications, and that the transit market will be the first to transition completely to battery-electric powered vehicles,” said Ryan Popple, Proterra CEO. “Early electric bus adopters like our first customer, Foothill Transit, have paved the way for future heavy-duty applications, like motor coaches and commercial trucks. As we see incumbents and more companies enter the heavy-duty EV market, it has become very apparent that the future is all-electric, and the sun is setting on combustion engine technology.”
[Source: Proterra & ArsTechnica]
