At first glance, the new buses look like any other, but in motion, the eerie silence makes it clear something a bit different is going on.
Christchurch company RedBus showed off its three new electric buses at a launch event on Friday. A public open day is running at the bus interchange from 1pm today.
Three new electric buses hit Christchurch streets on Friday.
It shows the novelty of the technology in New Zealand: throughout the country, just over a dozen electric buses are in use in city public transport networks.
Christchurch's new buses were built by British company Alexander Dennis and running on a Chinese BYD battery and power chain. They have a stated range of about 250 kilometres on a single charge, and will mostly be tested on route 29, which runs between the airport and the central city.
ZUARDIAN
The public can take a look at the electric buses during an open day at Christchurch's bus interchange from 1pm on Saturday.
From an environmental perspective, transport is one of the big problem areas for New Zealand: recently released figures from Stats NZ show household greenhouse gas emissions have increased by almost 20 per cent in the decade to 2017, driven largely by increases in road transport emissions. (This increase is partly because of an increase in tourists using road transport over that time.)
For Christchurch, 53 per cent of its emissions came from transport in 2017.
Diesel buses also cause air pollution that cause health and environmental issues.
ZUARDIAN
Wellington is trialing 10 electric double-decker buses.
RedBus chief executive Paul McNoe said RedBus "wanted to be a driving force, not a passenger, in the fight against climate change", and the buses were "a significant first step for Christchurch on our journey towards a carbon-neutral future".
"First step" are the key words there – the three new electric buses represent about 1.2 per cent of the 250-strong fleet that services the public transport network in Greater Christchurch. (This includes about 35 school buses.)
SLOW TRANSITION NATIONWIDE
REDBUS/SUPPLIED
One of three fully electric buses bought by RedBus. They will be trialled on the route between the Christchurch Airport and the central city.
The picture is similar in New Zealand's other main centres. Auckland's bus network had 1361 buses in use supplied by nine operators, of which just three were electric – about a fifth of one per cent.
A further five electric buses are due on the streets of Tauranga from August.
In Wellington, 10 electric double decker buses were rolled out last July, with a goal of having 32 running by 2021. The Greater Wellington Regional Council currently has 466 buses in its public transport fleet, including 10 electric double deckers.
ZURDIAN
Diesel buses are environmentally damaging from the perspective of both greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.
The council said it was developing a a fully electric fleet and a report will be presented to council over the coming months.cited the cost, charging facilities and access to sufficient electrical capacity as challenges to introducing more electric buses.
Wellington used to run electric trolley buses, powered by lines overhead, but they were phased out in November 2017. There was talk of refurbishing them with electric motors, but this is yet to happen to all but one.
So only a tiny fraction of the buses on New Zealand's roads are powered by batteries. Globally, the situation is similar in most places, though one country stands out for embracing the technology: China.
A BloombergNEF report found there were nearly 425,000 electric buses in use globally in 2018, and about 421,000 of them were in China. One city, the 12 million person strong Shenzhen, had electrified its entire bus fleet of about 16,000 by the end of 2017, and has just done the same to its 22,000 taxis.
America has about 300 in use, while there are about 2250 on the roads in Europe.
In fairness, uptake of all electric vehicles in New Zealand has been slow. As if May 2019, there were 14,229 electric vehicles registered in New Zealand – out of an overall fleet of more than 4 million.
It is ramping up. In 2015, the average number of new EV registrations per month was 42; in 2018, it was 466.
BUDGET-BREAKING
The uptake of electric buses faces a tension between environment and economics, and at the moment economics is winning.
The reason adoption of electric buses in New Zealand has been so slow comes down largely to their high purchase cost.
RedBus's McNoe said each of their new buses cost about $750,000 – about twice the price of the equivalent low-emissions diesel. RedBus had some financial support from regional council Environment Canterbury (ECan) and the Christchurch Agency for Energy Trust to buy them.
He said there were some operational benefits – the running costs were expected to be about 40 per cent lower – but that was not enough to offset the capital cost. BloombergNEF has predicted prices for electric buses will reach parity with diesel buses in 2030.
Another issue was setting up the infrastructure to recharge the electric buses. For example, RedBus' new machines used an 80 kilowatt charger – equivalent to about 40 standard home heaters – and took about four hours to recharge. That time was important because most buses were in service for about 20 hours a day.
McNoe said setting up charging for the three they are trialling was as simple as putting a little bit of new cabling to the yard.
But if they were trying to recharge 40, they would be looking for 320 megawatts, which was getting up towards the amount of power drawn by a small suburb, and was likely to push past the capacity of the nearest substation.
Some also questioned if now was the right time to be investing heavily in this technology, said McNoe. Prices have been coming down rapidly as the technology improves, a trend expected to continue into the near future.
He said factors like a Government carbon tax, or funding towards the capital costs, could change the situation.
"If we can get funding through Environment Canterbury contracts, there's no barrier from our perspective."
Converting existing buses to electric had been considered, McNoe said, but it "didn't even get close" to being financially viable. The company had not bought a new diesel bus in a while, but conversations about what it would purchase in the future were ongoing.
The economic realities are in direct tension with the increasingly urgent need to move towards a more environmentally sustainable society, which is being slowly acknowledged by local authorities.
CLIMATE EMERGENCY
Council's around the country have been declaring climate emergencies. The first to do so was ECan.
ECan manages the bus network in Canterbury. It is responsible for negotiating the contracts with the companies that own and operate the buses and designing the bus routes and timetables they run on. (The city council is responsible for the physical infrastructure they rely on, such as bus stops and bus lanes.)
In its Regional Public Transport Plan, which was signed off in December, ECan committed to transition to a zero emissions fleet "as fast as practicable", with an indicative timeframe of 2030.
ECan public transport senior manager Stewart Gibbon said the timeframe was based on the premise that each time a bus was retired, it would be replaced by a zero emissions vehicle. A bus has a lifespan of about 20 years.
But Gibbon was quick to emphasise that ECan's main goal was to reduce overall transport emissions by getting people out of their cars and promoted a balanced approach to move towards a lower emission fleet.
He said the funding that would be needed to replace the entire fleet with electric would also be enough to fund a "significant proportion" of the plans to increase frequencies on key routes, which would make buses more attractive and encourage people out of cars, reducing emissions.
"Taking a balanced approach, recognising economic, technology and operational influences, will enable us to better deliver our core goal of reduced transport system emissions."
He acknowledged the financial challenges and noted electric bus transitions internationally were mainly supported by government incentives or grants. (The Government here has exempted electric vehicles from road user charges through to 2025.)
Gibbon said range limits were a key concern in Canterbury, as many of the trips were more than the 250km range limit, and international experience showed cold temperatures reduced ranges. Customers also expected seasonal heating or cooling, which used energy.
Ralph Sims, Massey University emeritus professor in sustainable energy and climate mitigation said the best thing bus companies could do would be to get more passengers on board.
On a full bus, each passenger would be responsible for about 10g of CO2 emissions per kilometre. If the same individual was travelling on their own by car, their journey could produce 15 times the emissions, or 150 to 200g of CO2 per kilometre.
He said greater understanding was needed of how much cheaper the bus was compared with a private car. He said "most people don't realise their car travel probably costs around $1 per kilometre", if depreciation was taken into account, as calculated by the Automobile Association.
AT has put out a low emission bus road map which aims to have a zero emission fleet by 2040. It aims to buy only emission free buses by 2025, a goal that advocates criticised as too slow.
About 45 per cent of its fleet are two years or newer, and therefore have at least 18 years of useable life remaining.
Auckland Transport (AT) bus services manager Darek Koper said AT was in early discussions with three bus operators to introduce more electric buses in Auckland from late 2020, and was active in mitigating the risks associated with uncertainly over the range and useful life of electric buses.
