A 40-foot (12.19-meter) electric bus from Proterra Inc traveled 1,101.2 miles (1,772.21 km) at low speed without recharging, cruising to a new electric vehicle range record, the California manufacturer said on Tuesday.Bus and truck companies are beginning to launch electric models, typically for light- and medium-duty tasks. The new technology often carries a high price, though, and a major challenge is creating vehicles with acceptable range at a competitive price.<\/p>\n
A typical Proterra bus costs around $750,000 compared with roughly $500,000 for a typical diesel bus, chief commercial officer Matt Horton said in an interview. Proterra has lower operating costs but must convince customers that the higher sticker price is worth paying.<\/p>\n
\u201cHeavy-duty electric transit vehicles now have the capabilities they need. We will be turning our focus even more so to driving the cost down,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While battery weight is seen as a problem for heavy-duty trucks, eating into cargo capacity, Horton said that a bus is much lighter than a loaded big rig, even with a full complement of passengers.<\/p>\n
Proterra developed the battery for its bus with Korea\u2019s LG Chem Ltd. The bus maker has begun assembling battery packs at a new factory in Burlingame, California. It sold 190 buses last year and is on track to \u201cfar exceed\u201d that this year, Horton said.<\/p>\n
Navistar Proving Ground confirmed the single-charge trip, at 15 miles per hour. Proterra said it set the record earlier this month and beat a previous record of 1,013 miles by a light-duty passenger vehicle.<\/p>\n
Reuters<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Picture courtesy: Alamy<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A 40-foot (12.19-meter) electric bus from Proterra Inc traveled 1,101.2 miles (1,772.21 km) at low speed without recharging, cruising to a new electric vehicle range record, the California manufacturer said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[49,91],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4930"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4932,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4930\/revisions\/4932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}