Goodbye Old King Coal Generation.

Roger Bryant:

If you were managing a bus company that has to make a profit to survive and supply a service to tempt people to use it rather than the alternatives how would your thinking go? Would you demand government (taxpayer's) subsidies? Would you, like the Germans, choose to use expensive electricity that frequently comes from dirty fossil fuel sources (brown coal) to support your virtue signaling?

 

To be honest, if I were running a commercial bus company now, I would still be buying diesel buses.  But it's a fast changing market, so things may be different in 5 year's time, and will certainly be different in 15 years' time.  There will be a point, not too far in the future, when it stops being virtue signalling and starts being abandoning an obsolete technology.


If I were running a public transport system for a city, I might try buying (or leasing) a few electric buses to see how well they work.  My priorities would be different to someone running a commercial outfit.  City centre pollution would be my problem, not somebody else's.


When I was in Nottingham a couple of weeks back, I was very impressed with their electric trams, and how well they went up quite steep hills, in a way that normal trains don't.

Roger Bryant:

If you were managing a bus company that has to make a profit to survive and supply a service to tempt people to use it rather than the alternatives how would your thinking go? Would you demand government (taxpayer's) subsidies? Would you, like the Germans, choose to use expensive electricity that frequently comes from dirty fossil fuel sources (brown coal) to support your virtue signaling?

 

To be honest, if I were running a commercial bus company now, I would still be buying diesel buses.  But it's a fast changing market, so things may be different in 5 year's time, and will certainly be different in 15 years' time.  There will be a point, not too far in the future, when it stops being virtue signalling and starts being abandoning an obsolete technology.


If I were running a public transport system for a city, I might try buying (or leasing) a few electric buses to see how well they work.  My priorities would be different to someone running a commercial outfit.  City centre pollution would be my problem, not somebody else's.


When I was in Nottingham a couple of weeks back, I was very impressed with their electric trams, and how well they went up quite steep hills, in a way that normal trains don't.