<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>vdo</author><text>I agree, sorry to be tangential, but school buses even have a whole community around converting them into rvs&amp;#x2F;homes, skoolies. The advice thrown around most often within this community trends toward picking diesel over gas, because diesel ones are very reliable when maintained. I always read it&amp;#x27;s better to get a pre-2004 diesel bus, because they have simpler, more mechanical parts. Diesel engines are really hyped among skoolie enthusiasts, though of course that is not to say that in e.g. fb groups, you don&amp;#x27;t hear horror stories of people stranded with a broke-down rig, it&amp;#x27;s usually lack of maintenance though. When maintained, they do last well past when school districts retire them--maybe survivorship bias, the ones that lasted to the end were more likely to keep lasting. My boyfriend has one such bus that was made the same year he was born (1989) and it took us on a 10-state roadtrip and was our home for over a year.</text><parent_chain><item><author>VBprogrammer</author><text>&amp;gt; diesel buses breakdown regularly&lt;p&gt;In comparison to what? Diesel engines in commercial vehicles are extremely reliable. It certainly could be possible for an electric bus to be more reliable, they certainly have less points of mechanical wear. However, there are a lot of power electronics going into charging their batteries and delivering the battery power to the motors.</text></item><item><author>fiftyfifty</author><text>Even in terms of primary cost, diesel buses are expensive to maintain.  My FIL was a mechanic for the local school district for 15 years, so I got a little insight into that aspect of the district.  Our medium sized school district, 4 big high schools and all the feeder schools for them, employs around 6 full time mechanics plus their manager with all the equipment and the facility to work on the buses year round plus parts etc.  It&amp;#x27;s not difficult to imagine that cost alone adds at least $1 million to our district&amp;#x27;s budget annually.  In addition they have to have some percentage of extra buses because they are constantly rotating buses out for maintenance.  They also have to have at least one extra bus and driver on standby every day because diesel buses breakdown regularly during a route and they have to go out with a second bus and pick up the kids and finish the route.&lt;p&gt;So if a district can outsource part of that maintenance cost, and electric buses prove to be lower maintenance and more reliable that their diesel counterparts, there are significant savings to be had for the school districts.</text></item><item><author>MengerSponge</author><text>The secondary costs of running a diesel fleet are also huge! Diesel motors generate a substantial amount of fine particulate that is unhealthy for anybody, and particularly unhealthy for children.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC121970&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC121970&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if an electric fleet is the same cost, changing over would save &lt;i&gt;tons&lt;/i&gt; of money and alleviate &lt;i&gt;tons&lt;/i&gt; of suffering. It&amp;#x27;s the right thing to do for any ethical reason you can consider.&lt;p&gt;Unless, I suppose, you&amp;#x27;re intent on making the poor suffer. Diesel buses are very cost-effective at accomplishing that.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel</title><url>https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-fleets/us-schools-can-subscribe-to-an-electric-school-bus-fleet-at-prices-that-beat-diesel</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>WWLink</author><text>The diesel engines in the Thomas busses my school district had in the 90s would like to have a word with you. Those fuckers were always breaking down. lol.&lt;p&gt;Plus they smelled like death and produced gross amounts of black smoke.</text><parent_chain><item><author>VBprogrammer</author><text>&amp;gt; diesel buses breakdown regularly&lt;p&gt;In comparison to what? Diesel engines in commercial vehicles are extremely reliable. It certainly could be possible for an electric bus to be more reliable, they certainly have less points of mechanical wear. However, there are a lot of power electronics going into charging their batteries and delivering the battery power to the motors.</text></item><item><author>fiftyfifty</author><text>Even in terms of primary cost, diesel buses are expensive to maintain.  My FIL was a mechanic for the local school district for 15 years, so I got a little insight into that aspect of the district.  Our medium sized school district, 4 big high schools and all the feeder schools for them, employs around 6 full time mechanics plus their manager with all the equipment and the facility to work on the buses year round plus parts etc.  It&amp;#x27;s not difficult to imagine that cost alone adds at least $1 million to our district&amp;#x27;s budget annually.  In addition they have to have some percentage of extra buses because they are constantly rotating buses out for maintenance.  They also have to have at least one extra bus and driver on standby every day because diesel buses breakdown regularly during a route and they have to go out with a second bus and pick up the kids and finish the route.&lt;p&gt;So if a district can outsource part of that maintenance cost, and electric buses prove to be lower maintenance and more reliable that their diesel counterparts, there are significant savings to be had for the school districts.</text></item><item><author>MengerSponge</author><text>The secondary costs of running a diesel fleet are also huge! Diesel motors generate a substantial amount of fine particulate that is unhealthy for anybody, and particularly unhealthy for children.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC121970&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC121970&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if an electric fleet is the same cost, changing over would save &lt;i&gt;tons&lt;/i&gt; of money and alleviate &lt;i&gt;tons&lt;/i&gt; of suffering. It&amp;#x27;s the right thing to do for any ethical reason you can consider.&lt;p&gt;Unless, I suppose, you&amp;#x27;re intent on making the poor suffer. Diesel buses are very cost-effective at accomplishing that.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>US schools can subscribe to an electric bus fleet at lower prices than diesel</title><url>https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-fleets/us-schools-can-subscribe-to-an-electric-school-bus-fleet-at-prices-that-beat-diesel</url></story>