Setting sail on DART’s Bus Route 20 along Northwest Highway, the new addition joins the seven short-range electric buses already working Bus Route 28. The 40-foot Proterra ZX5 Max offers USB ports for passengers to use for device charging and, according to a press release, "regenerative braking that captures the energy normally lost to heat and returns it to the battery packs."
The difference in possible mileage between short- and long-range in this case is significant, to be clear. According to DART’s media representative Gordon Shattles, the long-range bus is good for about 10 times what the short-rangers, bought in 2018, can do when its battery is fully charged.
“Talk about an increase of technology,” Shattles says. “Those original buses have a 30-mile range as opposed to the new long-range bus, which has a range of about 300 miles.”
The popularity of electric vehicles (EVs) continues to rise, as the Biden Administration has expressed a commitment to deliver a reliable national network of EV chargers to meet the increase in EV sales. But DART isn’t yet sure its new electric bus represents the immediate future for the company.
“The conversations we’ve been having involve asking, ‘What does the future of fuel look like?’” Shattles says. “Years and years ago we started with diesel and we eventually transferred to liquid natural gas (LNG), which had a very short run with us before we switched to compressed natural gas (CNG), which is a low-emission fuel that our fleet runs on now. Now we’re examining 10, 20 years out and wondering what the future looks like, and we think this new bus can teach us about that.”
Large electric passenger buses like the ones DART has aren’t new, and several U.S. cities have already begun working them into their own mass transit rotations. In Texas, Austin, San Antonio and Fort Worth have electric buses servicing shorter routes. Elsewhere in North America, Portland, Seattle, Denver and Toronto have made substantial investments to add electric buses to their public transportation fleets.“The conversations we’ve been having involve asking, ‘What does the future of fuel look like?’” – Gordon Shattles, DART
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Financial factors will certainly be one of the key areas DART closely inspects over the next year or so, Shattles says. The long-range electric bus cost $780,000, including the charger, a sizable chunk more than the $500,000 cost of the current, standard DART bus. Part of the cost was covered by a federal grant DART had used to purchase the short-range electric buses a few years ago. Because money for oil changes, transmission fluid changes or CNG will not be required, the sticker-shock difference between the old and new will likely lessen as time goes on.
Saving money on fuel and oil and traditional automotive maintenance is a plus, but for DART it’s not all strictly about money in this case. The agency has customers it must serve in a comfortable and reliable manner. Recent events and hot news topics will also inform DART’s discussion on its future with long-range electric buses.
The extreme range of Texas temperatures will also test the new e-bus. Can a large series of lithium ion batteries packaged together that takes only a few minutes to fully charge keep passengers warm in the winter and cool in the summer? Questions like this means that DART doesn't yet know what success, or the future of long-range buses in Dallas, looks like.
“We have plenty of other questions we’re asking right now,” Shattles says. “Maybe Proterra isn’t the manufacturer for us in the future, we don’t know. We have to think about the impact of big winter storms like the ones we’ve had in the past couple of years. We still need to be able to run our buses even if the grid goes down. We have to figure out how to charge a fleet of electric buses if there's no power. Lots of questions, still.”
