I think the situation is a little more complicated than that. Electricity is a much cheaper fuel than diesel, and maintenance costs are lower for electric vehicles too, so in the long term electric buses may end up saving more money than they cost.

Add to that the fact that interest rates are very low right now, and it may even turn out that financing the electric buses and charging systems could allow cities to save money from day one, though I haven't crunched any numbers so this is admittedly just speculation on my part.

I think there is a <citation needed> here. Do ICE drivetrains really constitute a large fraction of the maintenance costs on cars and buses? In my experience, suspension and steering, and auxiliaries, are the things that break.

Compare that with Brakes, Oil changes, Transmission service, DPF + DEF and the host of other things you get with a diesel engine + transmission.

We've got a diesel truck, diesel tractor and EV, it's pretty easy to see the maintenance differences between the three of them over the years(the tractor being the highest with the added complexity of a hydraulic system).

You can't do this with ICE, if you put diesel fumes in a compression chamber and pump the cylinders up and down, it doesn't turn back into diesel fuel, combustion isn't symmetric, so you need to actually have brakes.

The answer is probably easier: a Prius is 3300 lbs and a Dodge Ram is 6600 lbs and carries much, much more if working. Those truck brakes are going to be thrashed much harder.

All that happens is you cut power to the motor but leave the wheels attached to the motor. This is the same as "engine braking" on a manual. The wheels turn the motor, which steals kinetic energy from the car and charges the battery.

There's no extra bits or anything. It's all in the drivetrain that's there already.

It really does come down to the fact that you brake in the 5-10mph range on the EV(or not at all in stop/go traffic).

>more things that can go wrong. Eddy Current Brakes are a passive system with an extremely high safety track record. If you ignore the bearing that holds the wheel/motor in place there are no moving mechanical parts. I couldn't think of a safer way to stop moving objects.

Electric motors will need their bearings replacing eventually, but they have no transmission fluids, no circulating oil picking up combustion products, and regenerative braking removes a huge amount of wear on brake pads.

I have a plug-in hybrid (EV infrastructure isn't great where I live) and after 2500km the brakes still stick like new. They've barely been used.

Honda used to sell a natural gas civic and you could buy a home fill station, in the late 2000s it probably made a lot sense. But now, you'd be better off getting an electric vehicle and a home charger.

I think LPG is interesting, but if you're going to deal with speciality fuel/fueling, you can just get a hydrogen or battery electric vehicle and enjoy the benefits of an electrified powertrain. LPG powertrains retain the complexity and service costs of gas powertrains with pretty marginal benefits. Electrification has its own costs but unique advantages.

Not universally true. In Italy, where regular gas prices are stellar, LPG is a relatively common thing. Not common enough, but the infrastructure is "there" (although not as capillary as regular gas) and it's advertised as a consumer option.

When oil became cheap again, the government stopped the subsidies and it was back to petrol. The tanks and the pumps at the services stations were ripped out and sold to the Indians, Eastern Europeans and the Chinese.

http://www.meca.org/regulation/us-epa-20072010-heavyduty-eng...