Fast Charge Battery Electric Transit Bus In-Use Fleet Evaluation

The focus of this interim fleet evaluation is to characterize and evaluate the operating behavior of Foothill Transit's fast charge battery electric buses (BEBs). Future research will compare the BEBs' performance to conventional vehicles. In an effort to better understand the impacts of drive cycle characteristics on advanced vehicle technologies, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory analyzed over 148,000 km of in-use operational data, including driving and charging events. This analysis provides an unbiased evaluation of advanced vehicle technologies in real-world operation demonstrating the importance of understanding the effects of road grade and heating, ventilating and air conditioning requirements when deploying electric vehicles. The results of this analysis show that the Proterra BE35 demonstrated an operating energy efficiency of 1.34 kWh/km over the data reporting period.