On one hand, battery busses require lithium and rare earth metals which needs to be mined from a relatively short supply, as well as lots of fancy chemical processing which I’d wager produces plenty of byproducts, and batteries have a limited lifespan before needing to be replaced. On the other hand, trolley busses (the kind that gets power from overhead wires) require extensive infrastructure in the form of wires and poles, which require tons of metal (though much more abundant steel and aluminium) to produce and energy to install and maintain, and the wires also wear out from friction and also need to be replaced from time to time. Anyone know any papers comparing the sustainability of these two technologies? I’m also interested in how the wire-to-wheel energy efficiencies compare between them.
My guess is that some of the wired buses don’t have batteries. More than once I’ve seen the ones around me come off their wires and stop, blocking multiple lanes of traffic (it happens in turns), to reattach. I imagine protocol would be to drive to a good stopping point before reattaching if that were possible. They were also in heavy use before any kind of practical battery vehicle hit the roads.
Yeah trolleybuses have been around a pretty long time (particularly in really hilly cities like Seattle and San Francisco). Lots of transit agencies are experimenting with battery-electric buses, but trolleybuses (or some sort of hybrid trolleybus with a ~10 mile battery range) could probably work well for a lot of projects.
Like you mention, one of the major issues is the bus getting detached in a turn, but using them on routes with few turns and plenty of range to get things lined up would go a long way on that.