[z2]

Buses seemed to me to be a rare case where they are so big and heavy anyway, that low energy density from a cheap and old-fashioned lead acid battery could still work. But you're right, I started searching, and found a 2005 US DOT analysis that said otherwise: https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/Electric...

> Consequently, powering a full-size bus would require a battery pack that is unacceptably large and heavy, as well as too costly to make a battery-electric bus commercially competitive.

[rtkwe]

There's only a few places where lead acid batteries have really proven viable for transportation and it's in forklifts where their weight is a benefit instead of a detriment and the actual ranges being traveled are extremely short. Everywhere else they're just way too heavy to get workable ranges at reasonable weights.

[masklinn]

Yeah the problem is that there are few opportunities for the bus to recharge, they generally don't stop long.

An interesting alternative is modern In-Motion Charging (IMC) buses: stick reasonably big batteries on a trolleybus, when overhead wires are available the trolley uses them and recharges the batteries; and it can run for some time on batteries so it's not as bound to OHL as traditional trolleys.