Hi fellow Youtuber Adam Something released a video entitled electric buses are a scam with little asterisks and next to it and I'll link it in. down below and up here and all around. If you haven't seen it, go watch it first. Uh, but I will briefly cover the points in this and explain why I think he's wrong Now, what does he mean by scam here with an asterisk next to it? Asterix when they're used as a shiny green Pr stunt instead of building an actually viable system which in the majority majority of cases doesn't include battery electric buses.

As you no doubt know, most my viewers should know that I've done a video on electric buses where I visited a transit systems here in Sydney. They're a private company. They did a trial outfitting some of their fleet with electric buses and it's been such a success that they're going ahead and they've ordered more. They're doing it more, there's more on the roads and it's It's a huge success.

Um, they are fully behind electric buses and this is a private company. So if a for-profit private company has done a trial on electric buses and they reckon they're absolutely fantastic, Uh, that they they want to outfit basically their whole fleet with them and move away from diesel and gas powered buses, then well, you can be pretty sure they're not a scam. So there seem to be quite a few people including myself who disagree with Adam that, uh, no, they are very practical and they aren't the scabs. Let's have a look at the video.

Big buses are a bad idea. They might have their niche applications, but generally we shouldn't be moving in this direction. not with the alternatives available to us. So they're generally a bad idea.

And we should not be moving in this direction. Well, sorry, but um, the world is moving in this direction whether you like, like it or not. Actually, the world has decided that electric buses are a thing and they are going to move in this direction. This is a report from back in March: How China have 421 000 electric buses in Chinese cities.

This is insane. The growth of electric buses In China. Why are they doing it well for reasons we'll talk about? No doubt you'll see this sort of growth curve in other countries as well. So regardless of where you think it's a good idea or not it's happening.

Electric buses are basically trolley buses with a local power source. Of course, this does make them flexible, I.e they can go everywhere without an overhead wire. But here's the thing. Where will they actually go? You see, electric buses are mainly used inside cities, and city bus lines have this attribute of not changing their routes.

We know the exact path of the bus in advance. Why not just put up some wires above that route? That way we don't have to mess with the heavy batteries weighing down the bus. Not to mention the enormous safety hazard. Yep, okay, that's a fair enough point if we know the bus route.

The bus routes are usually fixed like this. 99 of the time there. Well, if you've ever been in Sydney, you'll know that uh, it's not 99 of the time they go on the same route. Um, why don't we just install the wires? The first is practicality and infrastructure cost and the red tape to get all of this stuff to happen.

It doesn't just magically happen the road. the existing road infrastructure is already there. So if you've got existing buses which you're actually replacing which almost every city has like we're not talking about like building a city from scratch. Here, we're talking about like building in an existing city and replacing existing uh, diesel and gas powered buses.

You can't just go stringing up lines willy-nilly it's not that easy. and the next thing that really bugs me is the looks of it. but he does actually mention this. Here's an image of Dohan Street in Budapest where trolleybuses run.

As you can see, the wires are barely visible. so there's two wires like this. Okay, but putting these down every street on every bus route is just crazy and it just bugs me. Let's take Melbourne, uh, for example, Big Cosmopolitan, uh, city and they famously have their trend networks and I actually love going on the trams.

Trams instead of trams are actually they actually use tracks like this and single wire above whereas a trolley bus uh has to have two wires because it doesn't have a track. Look at these like daggy wires and sure you do tend to like just ignore them after a while. but it's the same with that power pulse as well. If you ever lived in a area grew up in an area with power poles, you just like.

you tend to ignore all the power wires going everywhere as then. If you live in a place which has underground power and then you go back to the power lines, you really notice them. No, no thanks. We're better off without the wires.

And it's not like the Oompa Loompas can just come along and magically install all these wires everywhere. It's not that easy and take an existing uh city like this and just imagine they had regular uh diesel buses running uh through these streets. If you want to install a tram system, then you've gotta. As we've just done recently here in Sydney, we've just installed some light rail and uh, trams and stuff and they have to actually run on the specific route so you've got to dig them up and clear them.

It's taken years and years of infrastructure to actually do this sort of stuff. Sure, it's a bit simpler, uh to install wires and stuff, but still, the infrastructure uh, required to do it is incredible. Not only um, just from like a physical point of view, installing all the Um power like all their poles and everything to hold them up and then all their tension wires and all the rest of it. And uh, then you've got to have specific corridors.

Sure, the trolley buses do have like a real long arm on them so they can't actually um, sway. you know, in and out of lanes and and stuff like that. But like, if you've got construction, you have to go around them. You're screwed.

and we'll talk about this in a minute. But ah no, no, no, no, no, no, you've got none of that. If you go to fully electric, none, you don't have to change anything. Nothing here changes.

Just drive out the diesel bus driving the new electric bus. Bob's your Uncle. Not to mention the enormous safety hazard. You know how electric cars tend to basically burn to ash when the battery catches fire.

Electric buses can do the same, except with a battery multiple times the size. Okay, so he's talking about a battery fires if that's your argument. Well, diesel buses do it too. And gas buses as well.

The article This year. Why are Sydney Buses still going up in flames and what can be done about it? There it is there. Um, it doesn't look good, does it? And ironically, it's the batteries in these diesel buses that are a good proportion of the fires in this particular case. And then there's the gas.

uh, bus, uh, fires as well. So if diesel bus, batteries catch on fire and electric bus batteries can catch on fire as well, you just argue in semantics. Really, there's just no point. Speaking of batteries, their construction and disposal are very polluting.

not to mention the occasion of slave labor involved in the mining of the necessary rare earth metals. Okay, if you're going to use this argument, uh, about electric buses, you have to do them the same. and more so for electric cars. Yeah, good luck with that.

The electric car future is, or revolution is already here. Sure, it's a fair point, uh to bring up and we need to probably do better in this regard. but it's not an argument against them and that's just silly. These things can be fixed.

Further problem is that electric buses aren't a good option where public transit is needed the most. I.e developing countries electric buses are much more expensive as it turns out, costing up to twice as much as diesel buses. Okay, not the best photo Example: If you're talking about developing countries like this, if again, that's one again, what going to be one of your compelling arguments, which it goes on to be on the economic side of things as we'll see in a minute, then yeah, good luck trying. Like you've already got the wires on the side here.

like to power all the homes. Good luck trying to get, uh, trolleybus wires like in the middle of all of this. This to me is one of the best examples of where electric buses come into their own. And the huge advantages? Look, you can probably even see the pollution in here.

This is a huge deal. This is where electric buses can really come to their own in. you know, like heavy stop start. Uh, stuff like this.

Just like the chaos that is in this picture and the pollution and everything else, electric buses solve all these things. You don't want trolley buses in this sort of situation. It's just silly. Electric buses are much more expensive, as it turns out, costing up to twice as much as diesel buses.

So a country or a city with limited funds can either buy say, 500 electric buses or 1000 diesel buses. Now, electric buses are generally cheaper to operate, so they would save money on the long run, but during that time you only have 50 capacity. Since you're earning 500 buses instead of a thousand, that means potentially tens of thousands of cars stay on the road, hundreds of thousands of people will not have access to good public transit, and so on, especially in developing countries. This can cause losses much greater than any cost savings by electric buses.

Since potentially hundreds of thousands of people won't have access to high-capacity affordable public transit, this will very likely set them back economically, which means a major tax loss for the local authorities. So he's using the argument that electric buses cost uh, twice as much. Uh, I've actually got data on that. This is a financial analysis of battery electric transit buses.

I'll link it in down below and this is from the National Renewal or Energy Laboratory. I've used their Uh data for before for solar stuff and it's really good. Conclusion: Uh is basically a 3.6 year payback on the investment, and they're talking about the vehicle infrastructure and cash flow evaluation model and all that sort of stuff to get a net present value. Um, so all the economists out there can go berserk on this sort of stuff.

But the baseline scenario invested in four uh, battery electric buses. And so what they've got here is the purchase price of the battery electric buses 3.2 million dollars, the purchase price of the diesel buses 1.7 So it's slightly under double uh, the cost there. but I've got other figures that show it can be lower than that. But one thing, he's not factoring in.

diesel vehicle maintenance down here: 1.1 million dollars. Now, this is what I found when I, uh, went to visited the depot the the electric buses. They said, um, yeah, they have to like maintain the brakes and the steering. They have to check them and stuff like that.

But as far as engine maintenance goes, they've had to do absolutely nothing to them. Of course, this is one of the big advantages of electric cars as well, and it flows onto electric buses. The maintenance costs are vastly less. and there's a paper here from 2016, so you know five-year-old data prices are coming down on electric buses.

Look, they've got the Uh investment, the annuity, and uh, the per kilometer cost in Euros here. Um, for diesel is basically they've normalized it. Um, a per kilometer is 1.1 whereas electric is 1.42 So it's only like 0.3 times. Uh, the cost.

So like 30 percent more basically. So it's you know, it's not double. In this particular case, they have factored in battery replacement uh as well. For those who bring up that point, and uh, rightly.

uh. So of course, I'm not sure what the uh lifespan of a regular diesel bus is. If anyone knows, leave it down below. But look at the energy costs here.

Ongoing. I mean, this is Huge. There's like it's getting towards an order of magnitude difference in the cost uh, to actually run these things. So I'm not sure where they're getting that data from.

But you know there's a big difference. Which Adam does admit that you know that's one of these uh things. is that? Yeah, Sure, the operator ongoing operating cost is much less for electric buses, but this doesn't factor in maintenance either, which is much less for electric buses. And that's a large cost.

So his argument here, he's tried to like split it into like it's either this option get 500 buses or it's this option, get a thousand buses And he's got like the pros and cons of each and by showing them in the green, these are the good points. This is a good point over here, but I like as if these are the only two binary options to go with. sorry doesn't work like that in the real world. First of all, if it's private companies doing this sort of thing, then they if they can show a return on investment over you know, a five or ten year period, then they can actually get more funding from wherever.

Whether they're borrowing money you know, capital investment or whatever, and wherever loans or whatever they're getting, they can actually show that they've got a better investment over the long term. The they're going to choose the electric buses and he doesn't argue this point. They have cheaper operation, lower maintenance costs, and everything over the, uh, over a, you know, a reasonable time period. So it's not just about the lower initial price here and this hundred percent uh, capacity thing.

like you're going to have only fifty percent of the capacity. As I said, we're not starting a city from scratch and going. oh, we're going to buy 500 buses or a thousand buses. You've already got all the existing bus transport infrastructure in place.

You've already got the roads. The buses are already running diesel, all gas powered buses. The argument is whether or not you want to replace them with electric buses and the private company that I visited. they've done the test, They've run the numbers on it and they said, yeah, we're going electric buses, thank you very much.

And that's just on the economics and finance side of things, let alone, uh, the other advantages of electric buses. So I'm sorry, but I am not buying this argument at all and this seems to be what is tying his argument together. It's like, well, you've got this option of this option Now if you think I'm wrong, leave it. in.

the comments down below, I can guarantee you that the combined cost of additional welfare and policing and the missing tax revenue will be a much greater amount that any savings electric buses might bring. I don't know how he can make that guarantee. Where's your data? Show us, um, that all this social economic cost and tax loss and uh, you know, the socio-economic benefits and all that sort of stuff. I'd please show us the numbers.

I'm not buying that at all. The bus has a small battery or diesel generator inside that allows it to run without a wire, usually between 10 and 30 kilometers. This way they can bypass accident sites or reach areas without overhead wires, thus solving the flexibility issue. This one is interesting.

He's shooting down his own trolleybus argument of course. uh by saying oh yeah, Use these autonomous uh trolley buses which have a smaller battery in them. but they also have the, uh, cantenary, uh, wires on top. Uh, they go up and you know you can go up and actually connect to the wires or you can, uh, put them back down.

I don't know. um, how easy it is to sort of go up and align them on the wires and all that sort of stuff. I don't know. It seems a bit fiddly, but it it is a thing.

Um, and they do work. So his argument is is that he seems to admit that a hundred percent, uh, trolley buses are not the solution because obviously you can't run the wires everywhere for a multitude of reasons. So why not have a 10? His own words, 10 to 30 kilometers worth of batteries in there? So when it has to go off a route and stuff like that, well, if you're going to make your bus electric, you've got the same battery fire problems that he's uh, talked about. What? That's suddenly not a problem anymore because it's a smaller, uh battery.

The Battery: The buses I looked at had uh, 328 kilowatt hour battery packs in them, as opposed to my Ioniq Ev which has a 38 kilowatt hour. so roughly order of uh, magnitude, bigger battery. So if he's going to argue that we need these autonomous trolley buses, then why not? Um, make them fully electric buses Like It's what is the argument against fully electric buses, They can still blow up, They still have to mine all the stuff which you know, using slave labor and all the disadvantages he's gone into. But then he says like a couple of minutes later that oh yeah, we need this.

Um, yeah, of course you need this. You can't run trolley buses everywhere, especially in existing infrastructure. Just the red tape alone actually putting the wire infrastructure in place. For all this sort of stuff, it's a huge cost.

It's huge amount of red tape. It takes years and years. Whereas electric buses, you simply just drive them out. It's a complete no-brainer to go with fully electric buses.

Now I actually, um, spoke to transit systems just before I did this video. Yeah, they said yeah. The trial has been great. Well one of the long-term issues once they go on a larger scale will be actually charging these buses.

So I am certainly. um, I think the future is fully electric buses with um, cantenary. uh you know why is that? well pop up at like certain locations not only at the depot of course. Although it like it really is easy to plug in these.

you're driving the bus into the depot and it takes seconds just like an electric car to just plug it in and it charges. but uh, transit systems have said yeah, that's that's one of the issues is uh charging these things so you could have them at like a selected uh, just like bus bays where you know bus is going to like sit for a little while. You know they might sit there for 20 minutes between routes and changeovers. and and stuff like that, you can just drive them there.

Boom, the thing comes up. it charges the battery. so then you can have a trade-off between um, having like a large like in the case of the ones I've seen 320 odd kilowatt hour packs. You can maybe have like 150 kilowatt hour pack, like half the size or something like that.

If you optimize the size of the pack with selected charging locations, then you've got the best of the both worlds. And you don't have to install the trolley wires down every street. It's it's a no-brainer You see buses like waiting around everywhere because they're you know, getting ready for the shift, or they're between routes or something like that. and then they can just like drive into certain like, you know, pre-designated locations, pop their thing up and get you know, an extra 20 30 minutes of charge while they're you know, sitting there reading the newspaper waiting for their next Uh shift to happen.

and then you can get away with smaller battery packs. So then you get the reduced costs or reduced environmental impacts. The reduced uh, probably increased efficiency on the Uh buses and they actually, uh, say, I cannot imagine running cables across Sydney nor the transitional cost of actually, uh, doing that. As I've said, it's just like, no, it's not going to happen, but like I said, there will be some actually opposite to what Adam something said.

I think there'll be niche applications for trolleybus, not for electric buses. I think electric buses are going to come to dominate. They're called trains. and if the distance is too short for trains to make sense, then trams.

or if the distance is too short for trains, but too long for trams, then tram trains. So no matter how we flip it, electric buses just don't make a whole lot of sense, right? So he talks about like all these different styles, trolleybuses, trams, tram trains, or whatever. Like all these different variations that are all good, they all have their applications. Yet he can't see, um, where electric buses would dominate.

I, I just know Now I think he's been caught in this, uh, socio-economic calculation that we saw before. and and just no, he's come to the wrong conclusions. And here's a cost-benefit analysis of Electric city buses. This has got some interesting stuff, including trolleybuses.

Once again, it shows how the number of E-buses in Europe is going up each year. Come on, this is just going to keep going. So they've got some future predictions here. Once again, they talk about China and they've got a lifetime cost of electric versus diesel bus.

Here electric is actually lower lifetime cost. And of course, Adam is pro electric. Um, it's just that he wants trolley buses instead of uh, But he also kind of implies that oh, you might as well stick with diesel for some of these things. And yeah, nah, because there's a reason why we're going away from diesel buses.

It's because of the health effects, the pollution, the lifetime cost of electric versus diesel bus. But when you include the healthcare cost for the diesel, look at this. It's absolutely enormous. There's some maintenance on electric, uh buses, and Uh cars.

As I've mentioned in my electric car videos, look at this. Do you see all the stuff that's not in an electric bus? Now this is a fascinating table. It's got four different types: electric bus, diesel bus, the Cng which is a natural gas bus, and uh, trolleybus down here. So they actually have trolleybus.

So for the annual cost of maintenance of the electrical charger and the grid, five units. So these are like amortized down to unit, uh, sort of costs. Now of course you have zero units for natural gas and zero units for diesels. You don't have to maintain the grid and charging systems, But look at this trolleybus 326 compared to five.

That's the cost of the electrical grid and maintaining the wires and the contenory uh system, and the whole like maintaining the whole show for trolley buses. So his main argument for trolleybus is a shot down right there. That's like almost approaching like two orders of magnitude. So that cost multiplier there for the trolleybus easily swaps.

Uh, the battery replacement cost and the initial upfront cost for the electric bus seems like a no-brainer And the annual cost of vehicle maintenance of course, the electric is the lowest. the trolleybus is 9.2 once again, because you've got to maintain all of this infrastructure and system behind it. So electric buses wins out over trolleybuses on these metrics easily. So here's what I think this comparison table should look like because you're not talking about the comparison of 500 versus a thousand buses.

That's just like it's demonstrably silly. This is crazy because we have existing, infrastructure, existing bus fleets we're trying to replace. So our four options are stick with diesel buses. We go for the trolley bus, which is what he's advocating for, or the autonomous trolley bus, which he admits is probably needed because you can't do, uh, trolley buses everywhere, or the fully electric bus.

Now you notice that the most number of greens are the fully electric bus. This is why the uptake on fully electric buses is massive, and diesel buses have a lot of green as well more than trolley buses and autonomous trolley buses. But we're moving away from diesel buses because of the key factors like pollution. I'll just briefly mention pollution because to be fair, Adam, something is not actually against a going fully electric.

In fact, he's He's pro. He's just into trolley buses, right? So, a global fossil for your air pollution linked to one in five deaths, And in Australia that represents about four percent of all deaths every year. That's about 5700 fatalities per year just due to local pollution caused by fossil fuel cars in the cities. The Australian Institute of Health puts the number of estimated deaths at 3 000 per year, So let's go for the cost.

Okay, diesel buses are lower cost. Electric fully electric buses are higher cost, but when you amortize over time, they're lower costs. But I admit he's right that upfront costs are actually higher. Uh, with trolley buses and autonomous trolley buses.

I don't actually know. Like the actual bus itself. I've got to assume it's the same as a regular bus. But when you factor in the huge infrastructure cost, surely it's got to be higher.

So I've put those in red. Now, when it comes to infrastructure red tape here, you've got none of that. for electric buses or for diesel buses, they just drive out onto the existing roads in the existing societies or used to them. Nobody has to approve it, pay for it, whatever, and then you've got the time to build the infrastructure as well.

It takes a long time to do this sort of stuff, and that's why the infrastructure cost is absolutely enormous. It's highest with the trolleybus because you have to put the wires absolutely everywhere. But if you go for the autonomous trolleybuses is what he advocates is a good option, then you've still got that large infrastructure cost. You might as well go to fully electric because these things already autonomous trolleybuses already have the batteries in there.

They're just, you know, a little bit smaller. Why? Why wouldn't you pay a little bit more and like, go for the fully electric bus? It's a no-brainer This autonomous trolley bus thing is just. it's a nothing burger. Of course, all three are fully electric, so they have no local pollution issues, but visual pollution.

The existing diesel and electric buses don't have any visual pollution whereas the visual pollution and you know that matters to a lot of people when it comes to mobility. Of course, diesel buses and fully electric buses are going to completely win out. Uh, the worst is the trolley bus. You've got very limited mobility and the autonomous trolley buses.

Yeah, they have the ability to go around, but I I reckon the limited mobility because you're still a you've got the much smaller battery that's not optimized for the full routes and things like that if something goes wrong, but then also you've got the time to like switch in and out of the wires if you need to. and stuff like that, It's just now the maintenance cost of the actual bus itself. As you we saw before, Fully Electric Bus has the lowest maintenance cost and as we saw on the chart before, the grid maintenance costs, um, are better. For fully electric bus and four diesel bus, they're just absolutely enormous for the trolley buses regardless of which option.

Even if you go the autonomous trolley bus, you still have to pay for a good chunk of the infrastructure required for the full trolley bus risk of fire, which is a big thing he talked about. All of them have that, except I probably say the trolley bus, but they can still catch on fire too. You can see here, it can actually happen. This is trolleybus.

You can see the cantenary arm on top, so I'm going to give it that. That's probably the least fire risk out of them, but it's all like a nothing burger now. of course, once you have batteries in a bus, it's there are battery, uh, replacement costs. So the autonomous trolleybus and the fully electric of course have that the others don't.

And of course, the diesel buses have higher fuel costs. The other three options have much lower electricity running costs. Another reason to move from the diesel buses to the electric buses is the rough ride on them. And I've spoken to the operators of these buses and they say yeah, everyone loves the smooth operation and quiet operation of them.

It's just brilliant. Huge advantage. Lastly, I'm talking about delays here. So of course a trolley bus.

Um, everything's in the system is delayed because you can't go around a trolley. Well, maybe you could lower it and you could go around. But like, it's like, yeah, there are going to be delays and autonomous trolleybuses. I think there's going to be some.

although I've never been on one. I don't think there's some delay in if you have to change over to, you know, raising it up, make sure it's connected all right, and stuff like that. It's just there's zero delay with electric buses and diesel buses. So there you go.

They just came off top my head. I probably could put more on here. Leave it in the comments down below if you've got more. But there's a reason why there's a huge uptake on fully electric buses is because there's so many advantages.

the autonomous trolley buses. It's it's a nothing burger. I don't see it. You might as well go to fully electric.

uh, buses. If you're gonna put you know, it's like a third of the battery capacity in there. Anyway, I do like yeah, no and just trolley buses. No, we're not talking about setting up cities From start.

We're talking about replacing existing buses on existing roads in existing cities. This is why we're moving from diesel buses to fully electric buses. And this is why Adam Something is wrong. That fully electric buses are a scam.

They are not a scam. There's a reason we're moving to them and it's a good idea. Trolley buses and fail. So the whole concept of electric buses as we applied today is pretty dumb.

It's pretty dumb. Um, no, it's not. It actually makes the most sense. The electric buses work because you get your funding or whatever and as funding comes along, then you can replace one diesel bus at a time with a fully electric bus without the required infrastructure.

Imagine the commitment, financial commitment, and also the red tape commitment. You've got to get state governments on board, local councils on board. You can imagine just the arguments in parliament trying to get these uh things. uh, actually approved.

whereas fully electric buses none of that is required like private companies like I visited uh here in Sydney are running their diesel and gas powered buses and they right on. You know, off their own bat, they did this electric bus trial. No paperwork, no red tape, no government or whatever. they might have been a little bit, but you know, and basically nothing compared to installing trolley wires over the top.

And they were able to run these trials and the buses just rode out. They're just regular buses as long as they pass the uh. road worthiness. Uh, test.

That's it. And this is why fully electric buses are going to be the future. Nobody's going to make the commitment to the trolley wire idea. It was a good idea.

You know, 50 years ago or 100 years ago or something like that. A lot of cities went, oh, let's electrify everything. They're all excited and some countries went all in on these, uh, trolley buses. But today, it's a complete no-brainer to go for fully electric buses over trolley buses.

This is no argument. So yeah, sorry Adam. I think your reasoning in this is, uh, just way off the mark. But um, there may be a lot of people out there who agree with um, Adam, and uh, disagree with me.

If so, leave it in the comments down below. and if you dislike this video, you can leave a dislike. now. Anyway, let's see what the audience has to think.

Leave your comments and suggestions are down below. So thank you Adam for getting in touch and uh, suggesting that I leave my thoughts. Um, so I've done so in this video and hopefully, um, that can be information for a follow-up video that you do where you can maybe explain your position better because I think the argument in here is sorry. It's a bit untenable.

I think electric fully electric buses are the future anyway. hope you enjoyed it. Catch you next time.