Half by 2030

At the Committee of Supply, a plan was announced to have 1 in 2 public buses be electric by 2030, prior to having a fully “cleaner energy” fleet by 2040. Here’s how I think it may play out.

As things currently stand, around six thousand public buses are currently plying Singapore roads. Making every other bus an electric bus will thus be a very large undertaking, large enough to potentially require an overall rethink of how we operate the public transport system.

It also doesn’t help that the cost of batteries often make electric vehicles far more expensive than their internal-combustion counterparts. Fortunately, an argument made by electric bus makers is that at scale, their vehicles are likely to have simpler electric drivetrains and other components, which may result in maintenance savings and thus a cheaper overall cost across the lifespan of the vehicle. That is, if they can be kept long enough.

In any case the LTA has also made a commitment to buy primarily electric buses going forward. This may be the same reason why they may not buy parallel hybrid buses again (such as the Volvo B5LH), due to the complexity of blending the electric and combustion engine drivetrains. But it could also be possible that the use of series hybrid buses, where an engine powers a battery that drives the motors, could be explored to increase range of electric buses especially in Singapore weather. But this may also be complicated due to upcoming Euro VII emissions standards.

Up and up

It’s no secret that fares have been going up in the past few years, especially looking at the energy market. Our electricity generation mix means that we are quite vulnerable to rising oil and natural gas prices, which I doubt are within the government’s control if the rise in household electricity bills are any example. What makes this worse in a public transport context is the relatively slower pace at electrifying the public transport network (be it through electric trains or electric buses), which further increases our exposure to oil prices.

This probably won’t get better at any time in the next few years. The lead time to order electric buses and expand the requisite charging infrastructure within depots and potentially interchanges too will probably take at least a year, and that still requires the LTA to have collected sufficient data and make a decision on how they wish to operate electric buses before even beginning the tender process.

We see this in how the political promise is structured — first 400 electric buses by 2025, and then the actual 1 in 2 to be implemented after that, between 2025 and 2030. If that figure includes the existing 60, that means 340 to be bought in the next 3–4 years on average, though I’m personally counting on a surge of bus deliveries in 2024–25 just before the promised deadline. So why the slow pace in the first three years, and then a rush to implement a large scale rollout later? The answer is infrastructure. I’d make a good bet that the LTA would very much like to have its own depots up and ready with electric charging points. And their new depots will largely come up in that timeframe anyway.

Then there’s also the national power grid, and finding suitable locations from which the large amounts of electricity can be drawn to charge buses. On the MRT these take the form of 66kV substations located at depots and elsewhere along the line. It could be possible that bus depots co-located with MRT depots can share these 66kV substations, where the power consumption of running trains in the day also overlaps with that of charging buses at night if necessary, but those that don’t may have to have their own built. Maybe even have cables laid towards the bus depot.

Should one want charging facilities for vehicles parked overnight at interchanges, those need to be built too, by working with property owners to have their electrical infrastructure upgraded — though by using existing electrification grants, those may be able to be done at the same time as the implementation of electric car chargers in their car parks.

Doing all these take time.

Organization first

In the meantime, an electrification drive can also result from the opening of new rail lines, completion of rail renewal projects, and corresponding bus service changes resulting in less buses on the roads. This is further justified by an increase in remote working and such reducing the actual need to operate that much more service in peaks. This is likely to happen following the opening of rail lines in the next couple of years — between TEL and CCL6 there are likely to be significant cutbacks in bus service, not to mention whatever may pop up around the JRL opening. Go take the train.

The opening of new bus interchanges — at least the few new upcoming bus interchanges — and hopefully the breaking of longer bus routes at some of these interchanges, should also have a similar effect. Sections that can have its passengers switched to the train can be cut, and low-demand sectors of bus services may no longer exist with a break of the route. These may also help to reduce the overall bus fleet requirements to make it more conducive for electric vehicle deployment, but still may not answer the question of what operating model we should use.

Additionally, if current electric bus deployments are examined, none of them are deployed to the long-haul expressway trunk services, even those likely to survive past 2030. This could be an example of cutbacks that can be explored — they may not be looking at running electric buses on this sort of service at all, because passengers should be better off using electric trains for such travel patterns. But of course, as part of the greater initiative to meet the greater goal of having all vehicles on cleaner energy by 2040, the LTA would have to quickly come up with plans to build a rail line in those areas by 2040.

These initiatives should help in reducing the absolute amount of buses needed for daily operations, which means the overall public omnibus fleet requirement is reduced. As such, instead of buying three thousand buses to meet the 1 in 2 goal, we may only need to buy slightly over two thousand, for example. Still a large enough undertaking, but it does mean we can grow the infrastructure less quickly.

On your marks

As part of the current electric bus pilot, slow chargers were installed at Seletar, Loyang, and Bulim — all LTA-built bus depots, presumably giving them a freer hand to arrange for the required electrical infrastructure for chargers. Consequently, since SMRT does not occupy a depot equipped with chargers, it is forced to garage its six Yutong electric buses out of Bulim Bus Depot, sharing facilities with Tower Transit.

It remains to be seen whether permanent depots like Gali Batu and Sengkang West will have infrastructure for overnight charging of buses installed from day one, or given the pace of the review, will they have to be installed by others after the fact. Considering that those two depots are only going to be opened in 2024, that means the first series-production electric buses are probably only going to be delivered and enter service by then.

That is, unless they are sent to existing depots and shared with the current demonstration fleet. Go-Ahead played host to the CRRC demonstrator electric bus likely for this reason, likely because overall Loyang Depot serves lesser electric buses than Bulim. There may also yet be space at Seletar Bus Depot with at least 21 chargers installed.

Conversely, if they go with opportunity charging, the chargers can be put in place at bus interchanges relatively quickly, probably within a few months — the contracts were awarded in late 2018, and testing of the charging systems were already underway in early 2020. Sure, it might have then taken more than a year to actually put Linkkers in service, but that might be due to a lack of local experience with the OppCharge system and its technical requirements. I don’t expect this to happen again as we overcome the learning curve and are more easily able to roll out the OppCharge system.

At existing facilities, the rollout of fast-charging equipment at bus interchanges integrated with commercial developments could also be coordinated with building owners to provide the additional power capacity, as part of existing subsidies dangled to help achieve 60k EV charging lots in carparks by 2030. New interchanges coming online in the next three years include Bidadari and Buangkok. From day one, contract terms between the LTA and the private developers could also be expanded to also come with rapid charging infrastructure according to the updated TR25 EV charging standard.

It also helps that rapid-charging buses do not need to be based out of a depot with charging systems, as long as they serve an interchange that has chargers. This meant that the Linkkers are able to use existing operator-owned infrastructure such as Kranji and Bedok North bus depots. This may allow a faster rollout subject to charger availability.

Where to start?

Where would one then expect to see the first series-production electric buses? Personally, I suspect a package transition would be a good time especially if depot charging infrastructure is needed; a fair wager for exactly which package would be when the incoming operator of the Gali Batu bus depot and its corresponding package begins service in 2024.

Gali Batu affords flexibility — it is near the Bukit Panjang charger which means it can take over SMRT’s Linkkers in Bukit Panjang, as well as any more chargers implemented in other nearby places. Being across the road from the DTL depot means that it’s possible that the bus depot can also share the MRT power intake system as mentioned earlier; taking advantage of excess power transformer capacity as trains are not running at night. But this is assuming, of course, that they take advantage of the construction delays to find a contractor to install whatever depot equipment is necessary to charge the vehicles.

Requisite service changes could also take place as part of the transition, where the incoming operator can directly train its drivers for the new electric vehicle-friendly routes. Rejigging long-distance routes in the Woodlands and potentially CCK-BP area should also be happening as part of TEL3-related bus service changes in the second half of 2022 anyway, so it could be possible that among what’s left, Gali Batu is mainly responsible for short routes that can be reasonably run with electric buses.

If the implementation of the Gali Batu package can be synchronized with the rollout of electric vehicles, apart from the rejigged routes, it could be possible for the incoming operator of the package to start from a clean slate with as large a fleet of electric vehicles as can be gathered. This leaves it free to develop new scheduling and operating procedures that are friendly towards the uses of electric buses, bringing in the necessary expertise as needed if it has to. Diesel buses formerly in the area can then be transferred to other packages to replace ageing buses in those packages that are due for retirement.

Consequently, a package-based model means that more and more areas can go fully electric as the infrastructural upgrades are completed. After all, without the infrastructure, there’s not much of a point in operating electric buses there. Just ask SMRT.