You have no clue as to my inspection abilities. Not objecting to doing a pre-trip inspection. Disputing that nowadays you need to do this daily.

Worst case you do what the military does - hand the driver a checklist to go over.

Which means that rather than having some mostly superficial stuff inspected 'daily' it's inspected once a month(ish). I figure that's a suitable inspection period.

It takes a special license in order to inspect your vehicle?

As for the daily inspection(which I'd do just for cleanliness), it seems to me that the regulation seems old - cars today are more reliable, but the mechanicals should be 'inspected' every 3-5k or so miles when it gets an oil change.

You have to remember that the goal isn't to get my money back, it's to cost them, preferably in a very legal and visible way, more than what they took from me. If I spend $1200 in order to cost them $800 because they 'improperly' confiscated $400 from me, so be it. It's very much a scorched earth policy. Sure, I'll try to be efficient about it, but that's the way it goes.

It's not without end - I'm not trying to bankrupt them. I'd be satisfied somewhere between costing them 2-10x what they took.

They can ask, but they not actually likely to get it. The feds don't compensate state actors for 'legal hurdles' on any sort of regular basis. Even state legislators tend to ask some very pointed questions when you beg for money due to lawsuits, and keep in mind that I'd be writing to them, so they have MY side of the story.

Consider red light cameras - the moment revenue dropped such that the cameras weren't making enough money to cover the hassle(which included lawsuits over them), many local governments started dropping them like hot potatoes.

Make it so that the anticipated butt-hurt from confiscating random cash in the low hundreds without substantial additional evidence is thousands in hassle expenses and they'll stop doing it.

It is a factor, but on some level almost all of us are 'environmentalists'. I don't think that the news that the battery factory will be some flavor of 'energy neutral' will actually sell all that many vehicles.

As you say - you can see solar panels because most of the cost is installation. I'll point out that if you design your building to have solar panels on them as part of the initial construction it's much cheaper. Ergo, if it 'barely' makes sense to install panels as aftermarket components to a building, it's a much easier decision to add them from the beginning. Especially if by doing so you can avoid some of the installation charges, gain local, state, and federal rebates, etc...

Note how I mentioned energy usage vs roof area - if you have a roof that's only good for keeping rain off your equipment, it might make sense to dual-purpose that area to also collecting power to run your equipment.

It doesn't take multiple lawsuits over $400 before the police department has spent far more than $400 simply doing all the legal stuff. I don't get into trouble with the cops that much(or really ever).

If I sue because they confiscated money on me claiming that it was 'probable cause' that it's mere existence in my vehicle means it's drug money, I surely have recourse to arguing against it in a court of law. All the way up to the federal supreme court (SCOTUS). Such is highly expensive, especially if it's 'only' over $400, but my point would be to make it clear that at that point I'm doing so not to recover the $400, but for the principle of the matter. I fail to see how I'd be declared a Vexatious litigant over following the proper procedures in a SINGLE lawsuit starting at small claims and being appealed up as necessary. That I would engage in an active political campaign against the practice would be a separate matter.

Unless I'm the target of a directed police campaign, such is unlikely to happen to me more than once, period. If I AM the target of such a campaign, that's another reason to sue, but would roll up all the police actions against me into a single suit.

As for corruption, I'm not so sure. Part of our 'problem' is that we really, really like to air our dirty laundry.

Like in any situation, knowledge of the system is a must for doing this sort of thing. In the USA it's pretty easy to sue in small claims, and normally speaking if your claim is tossed out in small claims that doesn't disallow you from 'appealing' it right into the normal court system, which is what I was talking about.

I wasn't actually talking about repeatedly suing them for the same thing. I was talking about doing the usual procedure - sue them in small claims, then elevate to the civil courts. The trick is that the normal response to a letter written by a lawyer is another letter written by a lawyer, and this can get quite expensive quite fast, but quite a bit of back and forth via official documents isn't unusual before an issue ends up going to the courts.

This is actually something I've written to my representatives about. I know it's screwed up, I don't like it, and want to see it stopped. You Aussies, going by statements from Australian citizens I've had conversations with on other boards, have your own issues that are seriously FUBAR.

The issue can be a complex one, but I think it boils down fairly easily:
1. Most companies can go completely to renewable power, excepting some where they need the byproducts for other uses. Concrete manufacturing, refining iron and making steel, etc... However, this doesn't mean that it's economic to do so.
2. There is however a limit - if the manufacturer uses more energy than their roof/property collects, they obviously can't go 100% renewable without obtaining more property.
3. I figure that it's probably easier to go 100% renewable if you plan to do so before even breaking ground on the factory. Such as selecting a location with nearly ideal solar patterns.
4. Net metering only works so long as there are other customers looking to buy the power when it's being produced, and generators producing when it isn't. If 'everybody' tries to do it, the system would break down.
5. To go along with this, even if they can't net meter, they're a battery factory. They can create a lot of backup storage even if they only drain/refill all their produced batteries once as a 'test', cleverly arranged to provide back up power. Or produce some batteries at cost, use degraded but still functional batteries returned under warranty/core charge, etc...

As the AC mentioned, the goal is less to get my money back than to make sure they don't turn a profit. That's their ultimate goal - increase the funding available to them so they can have more toys. If they're spending it on postage to respond to my letters, they're not buying more toys with it. They're not buying a fancy cruiser if they have to hire a temp worker to watch me because I plop my ass in their precinct protesting for whatever reason, asking questions, and making freedom of information requests.

As for 'can't sue them to get the money back', they have to send a representative to the court to make that argument. Sure, they might win, but that's X hours of the representative's time.

Meanwhile I'll be posting 'row row fight the POWAH!!' online and soliciting donations to continue my campaign of legal harassment for their imposing fiscal penalties outside of proper justice channels.

That's why I have a personal policy of always costing them more money than they seize from me. You confiscated $400 from me? I'm going to arrange to use more than $400 in police resources. I will mail you enough letters that you'll spend more than $400 just responding to them. I'll sue in small claims court so you have to send a representative to get it tossed out, then hire a lawyer to send fancy letters forcing the department to hire another fancy lawyer to send responses back.

Actually, I'd say writing the paper is step 1,
Step 2 is the paper being accepted by the journal, where it is then sent out to peers for review
Step 3 is the peer review, if it passes -
Step 4 is final editing and publication

Well, a quick search shows 260-360 horsepower for buses. An 85 kwh Model S is 362 hp. Now, I know that HP is far from the only factor, torque is as well, which is why buses and other large industrial vehicles tend towards massive diesel engines rather than fairly small gasoline engines that produce more 'power' on paper by the horsepower spec.

Mainly because the smaller engine will tear itself to pieces in short order if asked to do the duty cycle of the bigger engine. Still, electric motors are notoriously tough, but to my thinking a model S drivetrain would be an excellent stand-in as being for hybrid components for a bus.

Now, a Model S manages 265 miles off it's battery with a vehicle that's extremely aerodynamic and only weighing 4,647.3 lbs*.
Meanwhile a bus isn't aerodynamic, and I'm seeing 22, 28, and even 40k pounds.
That gives me electric ranges of 56, 44, and 31 miles of range per 85kwh battery pack, if you figure that lower average speeds allows the battery pack to mostly scale linearly. I'm also seeing 4 mpg for a bus - which would translate to 24 mpg for the model S of you compare the 28k pound 44 mile and multiply by the divider, so it sounds about right.

In addition we know that the wheelbase on a Model S is 116" and that the battery fits between the wheels. So a 45' bus should be able to fit at least 4 of them, assuming that with a width of up to 102" you couldn't fit the batteries in sideways.

That's without figuring on stuff like stacking the batteries on top of each other. My conclusion is that there isn't any need for roof mounting, removable seats, or even trailers for extra battery storage. If you want to save the battery weight, simply unmount them and leave the packs back at the station.

*I'll note that for a car the model S is actually pretty heavy, but we're comparing it to a bus here.

I think it's funny that you didn't consider the casualties as a negative as well. ;)

Super-capacitors don't currently have a price advantage over batteries for these uses - not enough range off them even if they can provide the necessary power.

This made me curious, so I found a citation.

They're blaming emissions standards that cost fuel. Personally, I have a hard time with systems that burn more fuel for 'less emissions'. There should be ways to do both, but from doing my research as I was considering a diesel vehicle, there's a LOT of angst over this right now because they killed a lot of diesel's mileage advantage with the new emissions standards. There's even forum posts out there on how to re-tune engines 'the old way' to get the mileage back.

A hybrid system is a good idea, but in 'most' cases would be used where the overhead wires already exist due to the capital costs being sunk.

As such, putting a battery into them is a good way to extend the range of your electric buses beyond the wiring, but I tend to picture it like a heat map. Depending on the size of the battery you put in, it's only a 'temporary' fix if the city keeps expanding.

1. Battery Swap stations. If you think the driver would need to 'hop out' you should check out Tesla's swap video. However, the problem here is capital in nature - you have to build the station(s) and populate them with batteries. Going with a Tesla model S 85 kwh battery gives us a very conservative $22k per battery - you'd get less range powering a bus than an efficient car, and currently Tesla is paying the least per kwh of any EV manufacturer. Going with a relatively small time bus maker? The battery will almost certainly be more expensive.
2. Battery Trailer: Some of these buses are already long enough, and another set of axles adds complexity to an already extra-long vehicle.