JAC Motors, a Volkswagen-backed Chinese automaker, unveiled the first mass-produced EV with a sodium-ion battery through its new Yiwei brand. Although sodium-ion battery tech has a lower density than lithium-ion, its lower costs, simpler and more abundant supplies and superior cold-weather performance could help accelerate mass EV adoption.
id be genuinely surprised if the energy losses of the cables are more than the energy losses of charging the batteries even if they are they are more than likely offset by the weight difference of batteries vs the weight of the cable connecting mechanism.
Then there is the issue of range and the uptime of the vehicles while you can use a trolley 24/7 you have to charge the bev buses
Then there is the issue of extreme weather cold or hot where due to AC and or heating and the temperature itself affects the range a lot
Then there are the maintenance costs of the battery the power capacity since you need space for the batteries
So all in all you exchange a bunch of negatives for the benefit of not needing overhead cables
A trolley with a small built in battery for those last few miles you might need to connect but don’t want to pull cables is the best of both worlds.
Hope that was a comprehensive enough dismantling.
Source for your claims?
Plus do you know how expensive it is to support the whole cable infrastructure, including personnel salaries, etc. I am not convinced your math is right, but feel free to prove me wrong.
My city recently decided to pull down the existing overhead cable network in favour of ‘local’ batteries in buses (was aging and needed a lot of maintenance which they were allergic to)
Unfortunately, that doesn’t really argue either way, as same city is now seeing the issues of not maintaining it’s water infrastructure for the last recent decades… They do some dumb shit