[extropy-chat] peak oil schmeak oil

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Alfio Puglisi <puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:

> On Sat, 18 Jun 2005, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> 
> >--- BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> News item from 10 February 2005
> >>
> >> Major Milestones Passed
> >> The CUTE / ECTOS / STEP fleet has passed two important milestones:
> >>     * Just before the end of last year, the total mileage of the
> 33
> >> fuel cell buses amounted to 500.000 km.
> >>     * By the middle of January, the vehicles had been running for
> >> 40.000 hours since the beginning of operation.
> >>
> >> All participating cities - Amsterdam, Barcelona, Hamburg, London,
> >> Luxembourg, Madrid, Perth, Porto, Reykjavik, Stockholm and
> Stuttgart
> >> -
> >> are very pleased about the progress of the three projects. Buses
> and
> >> infrastructure continue to operate reliably.
> >
> >As I am likely the only member of this list who has worked for a bus
> >company, I can categorically say that these numbers are TERRIBLE. In
> >order for a bus to pay its way, it needs to operate at least 30,000
> >passenger miles per week. These buses so far appear to be merely
> >feel-good rolling photo-opportunities for politicians to point at.
> >500km for 33 fuel cell buses? That is 15km each for last year. 40
> hours
> >of operation time?
> 
> Europeans use a dot to separate thousands. So those numbers are
> 500,000 km and 40,000 hours in US notation.

Thank you for that correction. This still isn't that great. 33 busses
doing 500,000km, which is about 300,000 miles, ergo each bus has done
about 9,000 miles, which is worth about 9 weeks of profitable use in my
experience. How long has this project been going on?

If they have not been using them at a profitable level, then they are
wasting energy.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

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