British Columbia in Canada has a long history with hydrogen for transportation and its constant failures. Ballard Power, the fuel cell manufacturer that pivoted away from lithium ion batteries in 1989 to the losing technology, is based in the Vancouver area. Whistler, the famed ski and mountain biking area with … [continued]
Four weeks ago, I didn’t know the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium existed. If I’d seen mention of it, I probably would have assumed it as an innocuous little organization full of pleasant Canadians working diligently for the good of Canadian transit. But the onion keeps being peeled. … [continued]
Globally, there are almost 700,000 battery electric buses in operation and perhaps 6,000 hydrogen buses. In Europe in 2023, about 6,400 new battery electric buses were registered vs. about 140 hydrogen buses. As I noted recently, there have are more hydrogen bus trials that have been abandoned than operational hydrogen … [continued]
After some recent contributions from Larry Evans and big news coming from BYD itself, I started digging into BYD’s monthly production and sales reports. The big business is the passenger vehicle business. However, BYD also reports production and sales of its buses (electric) and production and sales of its other … [continued]
Many citizens in Paris were caught off-guard on November 5 when a new ban on motorists in the first four arrondissements of central Paris came into effect. As they looked around their city neighborhoods, residents could see nearly forty signs for the ‘Zone à Trafic Limité’ (ZTL) — or “limited … [continued]
Over the past three weeks, I’ve been assessing various aspects of the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium’s (CUTRIC) positions, research, and publications on transit bus decarbonization. I’ve published ten articles directly about CUTRIC’s material and reports, or closely related and with serious implications for their claims that both … [continued]
Background: Spectacular Zion Canyon — Cars Prohibited 7 Months a Year: I would argue that the 6-mile route up Zion Canyon in Zion National Park is the most beautiful place in the world. Twenty-five years ago, Zion National Park went “green.” The National Park Service decided that automobile traffic in … [continued]
Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Michael Raynor, formerly a managing director of sustainability and thought leadership for Deloitte and author of multiple books on innovation and strategy. We talked about not only an innovative approach to addressing Scope 3 emissions Raynor has developed, but also an … [continued]
One of the amusing side notes of my recent foray into the challenges that the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC) is having was the tone deaf and counterproductive social media responses of their board member from Enbridge, the biggest natural gas firm in North America. When that … [continued]
New Flyer is the leading provider of transit buses in North America. It’s also the leading provider of hydrogen buses in North America, which is a problem for it, although it feels like an opportunity. That’s where the bad strategy comes in. As always when I talk about strategy — … [continued]
