School Bus Electrification: Charging Q&A

More than 25 million American children are transported to and from school on a national fleet of 480,000 school buses, accounting for 80% of the total bus fleet in the United States. Today less than 1% of school buses are electric; however, with the push to provide clean transportation while lowering annual fuel and maintenance costs for school districts, school bus electrification has begun to move quickly in several US states.

How are the charging systems serving school buses differently? Do school buses all use the same charging technology? What is driving electric school bus adoption? What agencies drive investment in school bus electrification? Agencies at the state level have been working for many years to drive clean school bus programs. In California for example, the California Hybrid and Zero-Emission Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project offers rebates of as much as $100,000 per electric bus purchase. There’s also $2.7 billion in funding for state-level projects that’s been made available via the Volkswagen settlement, and state agencies have chosen to spend a third of that money on school bus programs.

Why is vehicle-to-grid so attractive for electric school buses and why isn’t it mainstream yet if the use case is such a good fit? Because V2G is a promising technology, a lot of work is being done with pilot projects and standardization, but there is still a higher cost for bidirectional charging devices along with more implementation complexity.

We’re poisoning our children: “Decades of research show how childhood asthma and related health issues are aggravated by air pollution and vehicle emissions – and recent studies have shown the air quality can actually be worse inside of the bus than outside of it.” MayorOfLA

Have you heard of anyone doing a Mitsubishi Rosa yet?

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