Eau Claire Leader-Telegram. March 25, 2024.
Editorial: Mondovi’s purchase will be worth watching
We suspect there are going to be a lot of school districts across Wisconsin keeping an eye on Mondovi over the course of the next year. The district’s purchase of five new buses is anything but typical.
A federal grant allowed the district to purchase several electric buses. Superintendent Jeff Rykal said the bus routes are “very predictable, nearly the same every day, which is a perfect application for electric vehicles.”
That near absolute routine should indeed be the kind of thing electric vehicles can excel at. But we can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen during the winter months.
There were quite a few stories during the winter of 2022-23 about the toll extended cold spells took on electric vehicles. Most people know batteries don’t last nearly as long in cold weather. Charging times take longer, too. When your car is a battery on wheels, that’s a problem.
Some of the challenges were probably overstated, but we’ve heard enough to conclude that there were genuine challenges. A Forbes article from last October noted research that suggests electrical vehicles “can lose as much as around 41% of their battery capacity at 20 degrees Fahrenheit.”
There are plenty of times a day at 20 degrees in a Wisconsin winter would seem warm. Further dips in the temperature would increase the penalty electrical vehicles face. That means more frequent charging requirements, and the article also points out that a vehicle charged at 32 degrees will take in “36% less energy at 32°F than when it’s charged for the same amount of time at 77°F.”
The technology for these vehicles is improving. It would not be unreasonable to expect manufacturers to address the cold weather challenges as best they can. We’re not sure there’s an easy fix, though, since a vehicle’s heater is a major drain on the battery during cold weather. It wouldn’t be reasonable to demand that drivers and kids sit in an unheated bus on a subzero day.
Better battery capacity would help. Such advances would increase range, certainly, but would also probably increase charging times. There isn’t a good way around that tradeoff right now.
In the long run, the answer may well lie in development of better supercapacitors. Those devices can transfer electrical energy at much higher speeds than traditional batteries. That works both ways. They charge faster and release the energy faster. The catch is that they can’t store as much energy as traditional batteries — at least not yet. So a changeover in the industry isn’t exactly right around the corner.
It’s important to remember that this is still developing technology. There’s considerable promise, but we will inevitably run into situations that present issues we didn’t see coming. The same was true of internal combustion engines, too. It’s worth remembering that gasoline was originally a byproduct from the manufacture of kerosine — and it was so volatile its early creators didn’t know what to do with it. It was coal gas, not gasoline, that kept early internal combustion engines running.
We can’t fault Mondovi for taking the plunge here. As Rykal said, it’s hard for a school district to turn down free vehicles. This decision was a considerable savings for Mondovi taxpayers. While questions clearly remain, the decision is hard to criticize.
Whatever the result next winter, we’ll learn more about the potential uses of this technology for school districts and how others may need to adapt if they choose to follow a similar path in the coming years. Mondovi may have been among the first area districts to take this step, but we’d be surprised if they’re the last.
