E-bus struggles to make the grade

The city is restating its characterization of how an electric bus on loan performed in February tests around Oahu.

It turns out the e-bus made by California-based Proterra Inc. was more like the “The Little Engine That Could,” puffing and chugging up a mountain, and less like what a city official described last week as making two problem-free trips up the H-2 freeway.

During a state event last week showing off two e-bus models, Jon Nouchi, deputy director of the city Department of Transportation Services, described the performance of the Proterra model, which was given long-distance, hilly routes, as all positive with no problems even climbing up the tough incline from Pearl City to Mililani.

“No one really had anything negative to say,” he said of the Proterra e-bus when asked how the February test went. “We really tried to test these buses to their max limit. So with this bus we actually put it on the Route 52, which operates between Ala Moana and Haleiwa, and why that is significant is it goes on the freeway — high speeds on freeways are not really where electric vehicles do their best — but it goes on the freeway, it climbs H-2 all the way from Mililani to Wahiawa, then descends all the way to Haleiwa and then comes back to town. And it did two round trips on that with no problem.”

But after a Honolulu Star-Advertiser story about the demonstration, a reader commented that there was indeed a problem with his ride to Wahiawa on the green Proterra bus. The bus, said rider Robert Conlan, was crawling up H-2.

“Everyone was giggling,” Conlan recalled, describing other passengers on that trip. “I turned to my seatmate and said, ‘I wonder if we’re going to make it.’ It was running slow.”

Conlan, who said he was late getting to Wahiawa because of the slow pace, added that even going down regular streets and on the H-1 freeway, the e-bus seemed to be lagging. “It didn’t keep up with other buses,” he said. “It was not as peppy as the regular bus.”

Nouchi said the bus did do poorly with the hill’s grade, especially near Mili­lani’s Pineapple Road overpass where it was going around 25 miles per hour, or about 10 mph slower than a typical diesel bus.

“It did have some gradeability problems,” Nouchi said Thursday. “It did not perform up to where we wanted on that route.”

Nouchi also said Thursday that the bus had difficulty climbing up Pali Highway and was not as well air-conditioned as regular TheBus vehicles. The Proterra bus also wasn’t equipped with voice announcements, and it had request-to-stop buttons that were hard for some passengers to reach.

With all that said, though, Nouchi concludes that the e-bus did well overall. That’s because the shortcomings revealed were all issues that could be addressed with different equipment or setting options.

For example, air conditioning can be set higher, though at the expense of how far the bus can go on a battery charge. Nouchi also said Proterra can equip its buses with dual motors that give the vehicle high speed with one and climbing power with the other.

For the Hawaii test, Proterra set its bus on a kind of eco-mode that dampens power and extends range, Nouchi added.

So, even though the e-bus didn’t do well on some routes or meet the standards of all riders, the trial was a good one from the perspective of the city, which is considering e-buses as a way to save on fuel costs.

“It wasn’t a major failing,” Nouchi said. “Overall, we were pleased.”