If I'm reading that right the Battery Electric busses had the lowest maintenance costs? The need to charge is a potential issue, but at the same time busses do lots of low speed stop and go where battery systems are most efficient. As long as the bus has enough capacity for an entire day and can be recharged overnight it seems like an ideal solution, minus of course the up-front cost of the bus. Lower fuel costs, no noxious pollutants, less noise, lower maintenance, there is a lot to love.
An other option BEV busses give is hybrid trolleys, that way once a popular line gets fixed you can add overhead lines to it and later upgrade it to tram more easily.
It also means charge is a matter of having overhead lines which can be added as hoc (as overhead docking stations) to end-of-line stops, letting the bus juice up for some time before it runs the route back.
It is likely that new models had higher costs, including maintainers becoming familiar. Long-term, electric is unquestionably cheaper to fuel and maintain, assuming they are built to the same standards and scale as outgoing diesel models
I wonder about the added wear on roads that comes with so much added weight. That is the kind of cost that is easy to put in someone else's bucket until it impacts everyone. One of the roads near here was closed for a while putting a large amount of truck traffic on another road. It is impressive how quickly ruts have formed in a relatively short period of time from what I assume is a combination of increased traffic and the increased weight.
A typical diesel or natural gas city bus has a curb weight between 20,000 and 33,000 lbs[1]. An electric bus I found lists a curb weight of 28,000 lbs[2]. It doesn't seem like extra road wear is going to be a major issue.
Lowest short term maintenence cost. Until the battery is destroyed in a couple of years.
Charging a fleet of 100 buses overnight looks like a huge infrastructure issue to me. 100 charging ports, huge grid connection, substation etc. That is if the local grid even has capacity. Anyone who has tried to open a factory will know that is not always the case.
EV batteries have been performing much better than dying after just 700 cycles. Also, power is generally cheapest overnight when there is excess grid capacity. People with variable electricity pricing and battery banks make money by charging overnight and releasing power to the grid during peak hours. Commercial vehicles typically get more like 6,000 cycles out of a battery pack.
