At 20 mpg, this bus wouldn't have to be full to be effective. Heck, with only 4 riders, it would more fuel efficient than 90% of the vehicles on the road.

"..composite body all-electric version.."

If they took off tons of weight here, this probably helped. The stop and go nature of bus routes really uses EV to its advantage.

A fleet of smaller buses doing limited request services like a taxi from a series of nodes with no set route could work much better than the traditional set route, set time model.

With a charging station as part of a rail hub, the bus could take the passengers to their final destination as part of the rail ticket. Door to rail to door would hugely improve the functionality of rail services.

I like the small bus more buses idea. If you could get a bus withing 5 minutes going north/south and connect with another going east/west within 5 minutes, more people might ride buses. When it takes you 2 hours to get where a car would get you in 15 minutes...forget it.

This bus must be wildly underpowered. 150kW/650n-m for 30-90secs and then 100kW/400n-m continuous (info on UQM website) certainly isn't going to make any operators happy. Granted, it IS a bus an not a race car, but I wonder about pulling into traffic out of a bus stop, will it be a hazard? Also, I realize that it has an electric motor and that the peak torque is available from a stop, but 480ft-lbs (650n-m)is very low torque in the bus world. For example, a 6.7L Cummins ISB diesel engine, the smallest diesel engine you can buy in an American transit bus, produces 620ft-lbs @ 1500RPMs (not far from idle) and transit properties usually only use them for 30' buses. For another example, a Bluetec Mercedes 3.0L engine produces 450ft-lbs @ 1600RPMs (and 255hp @ 3700rpms). So this motor produces the equivalent of a ~3L diesel engine, that's tiny in the bus world. Not to mention that diesel engines use a transmission to get the necessary power they need. I'm sure this bus is a direct-drive platform, so it doesn't get the aid of a torque multiplication in multiple gears. The UQM drive system was really developed for a car chassis, so I wonder about performance of this bus, especially at full loads and on slight grades.

So, how does all this add up? It's easy to make a vehicle that gets 4x the fuel economy if you completely ignore performance. I'm sure if you stuffed a Bluetec diesel in a bus it would get ~4x the fuel economy too. I really wish the Altoona Bus Test Reports included performance data with the fuel economy numbers so that they could be factored in. I'm completely in favor of electric vehicles, but it's not wise to introduce vehicles that would give the public a bad taste for them. I'm thinking of the early diesels that hit America, everyone still has the association with plumes of black smoke behind the diesel cars and trucks. Even though that has radically changed in the past decade, many people still have that association, which is evident in the number of diesel cars sold here versus Europe.

"20 miles per gallon diesel equivalent"

I take this to mean that if a bus gets 5 mpg on diesel, then this bus goes 20 miles on the same energy. Take how many BTUs in a gallon of diesel and calculate how much a diesel engine can get out of it at its rated efficiency.

If a diesel in the bus is 30% efficient and a battery, controller and motor is 60% efficient, that is part of it. Say this bus is 1/2 the weight of a comparable bus, that is another part of it. The fudge factor comes in when calculating the efficiency of the electricity generation in the first place. I do not think that they are factoring that in.

"Transit Coach Operating Duty Cycle (ADB)" First, let's send the A-Team back to acronym school. Second, a good first step, by legend only 11 more to go. On the real positive side is the introduction of duty cycle charging and Altair batteries.

The real test here is what the SOC curve looks like after 5200 hours (annual work load.) What do the batteries cost and how often do they need replacement? MTBF?? And, the arachnid design looks utterly childish.

JMartin is right about the cost of the driver, that's just one of the reasons I prefer rail-based transit. Modern streetcars can carry more people in greater comfort and at lower cost than buses. And if you can get a grade-separate system you don't even need a driver, like Vancouver's Skytrain.

"I wonder how many KWhrs an efficient PV array covering the entire roof would bring to the party."

At 15% efficient and a 300 square foot roof area, the PVs could create about 4500 watts of power. That might help the bus go an extra 3-4 miles in an hour for about a 20% extended range.

Bill:

The average, rather heavy (31,000 lbs), trolley bus use only 150 KW (about 250 KW peak) e-drive motor and has no problem keeping up with traffic. Take-off is normally much better than diesel units. The problem is with overhead cables and limited lateral movements.

This much lighter unit should do very well with 100 KW (150 kw Peak). Seems that the Altair batteries (or equivalent) are well suited for extensive long life use on city buses.

SJC:

With improved futur solar cells (30 % efficiency), something like 6 to 8 Kwh could supply power to AC units and help to recharge batteries for extended range. Quick charges at selected specially equipped regular bus stops could extend e-range to 100% of requirement. The on-board genset could be very small and used during emergencies only or to crawl to the nearest charge station.

E-buses are not only cleaner but make much less annoying noises. Ideal for inner-city uses.

"The FCBE 35 transit bus was tested at a gross vehicle weight of 36,680 based on a seating capacity of 38 passengers, including the driver and 34 standing passengers."

Does that mean they had 73 people: one driver, 38 seated and 34 standing? That is one crowded bus.