Techno-Economic Analysis and Environmental Impact of Electric Buses

Nurizyan Khairiah Yusof,T M I Mahlia,M A Hannan,Pg Emeroylariffion Abas

doi:10.3390/wevj12010031

Nurizyan Khairiah Yusof, T M I Mahlia + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/wevj12010031

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Abstract

Electric vehicles are a leading candidate in the clean energy market. This paper aims to analyse the feasibility of the deployment of electric buses (EB) based on the existing bus routes in Brunei, by the use of life cycle cost analysis and the analysis of the parameters that influence the overall life cycle cost. The findings from the study revealed that EB are significantly more expensive than diesel buses (DB), with their acquisition and maintenance costs contributing substantially to their overall life cycle cost. In order to promote EB deployment, the government needs to look simultaneously into providing subsidies for EB and imposing taxes on DB, the provision of charging infrastructure, and ensuring maintenance capability, as well as increasing the current subsidised diesel price. It was also shown that increasing the cost of diesel to the average US diesel price of USD$3.101/L, an initial subsidy of USD$67,586 towards the purchase of EB, and a tax of USD$67,586 for the purchase of DB would allow EB to compete in the market, with the amount of tax and subsidy being gradually reducible over time, as EB and battery technology becomes more mature. From an environmental perspective, the emissions from EB come out higher than the emissions from DB. The efficiency of electric power generation needs to be enhanced, and renewable energy sources and the adoption of carbon capture technology need to be explored in order to exploit the full benefit of EB and ensure more environmentally sustainable bus operation.

Highlights

Demographic expansion around the world has drastically increased the number of private and public vehicles on the road, escalating various issues—from traffic problems to environmental concerns and climate change—to the extent that it is affecting human health [1,2,3]
The data for the calculations were obtained from interviews with local bus companies, research papers, technical notes and specifications from manufacturers, government publications, and subject matter experts, as well as current market prices obtained from various sources
This paper has presented a method of quantifying the Life Cycle Cost (LCC) and environmental impact of buses, and used it to analyze the feasibility of electric buses (EB) to enter and compete in a given market against established diesel technology

Summary

Introduction

Demographic expansion around the world has drastically increased the number of private and public vehicles on the road, escalating various issues—from traffic problems to environmental concerns and climate change—to the extent that it is affecting human health [1,2,3]. Governments and researchers have put in a lot of effort to mitigate the environmental effect due to the increase in the number of vehicles. Other researchers have suggested the use of cleaner alternative sources of fuel, such as biodiesel [5], solar energy [6] and hydrogen [7], thereby reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the transportation sector, as well as reducing the dependence on scarce fossil fuels. Electric vehicles have been suggested due to their environmentally-friendly zero tailpipe emissions [9,10]; at the moment, they are receiving a lot of interest

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