Electric school buses give kids a cleaner, but costlier, ride
BEVERLY, Mass. — It’s a gray November morning, and we’re on board a long, yellow school bus.
The bus bounces over this Boston suburb’s patched streets in a way that would be familiar to anyone who ever rode a bus to class. But the bus is quiet – and not just because there are no kids on board.
This school bus is electric.
Right now, only a tiny fraction of the roughly 480,000 school buses in America are battery-powered. Most still use gasoline or diesel engines, just as they have for decades. But thanks to fast-maturing electric-vehicle technology – and the new incentives available under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act – electric school buses are set to become much more common over the next decade.
“It’s like a big huge go-kart,” said the bus driver on that November day, who’s been driving school buses, mostly gas-powered, for over three decades. “When you accelerate, you move. When you stop accelerating, you stop. And you don’t hear any sound.”
“Driving a diesel bus is not like driving a go-kart,” she said.
Greener pastures
Environmental activists have been working for years to try to replace diesel and gasoline school buses with new electric models. Until recently, they faced some big challenges: Only a couple of companies made fully electric school buses, prices were very high, and the need for new “refueling” and maintenance infrastructure to replace tried-and-true diesel proved too daunting for many school officials.
That’s starting to change. Over the last couple of years, more companies — including long-established school-bus manufacturers — have begun making electric school buses, government subsidies have increased, and regulators and nonprofits have worked to educate school districts, utilities and the general public about the advantages.
But this isn’t like selling electric vehicles to drivers. School districts have to navigate a confusing array of subsidies and restrictions — and deal with the awkward fact that right now, a new EV bus costs a lot more than a traditional diesel-powered bus (in fact, three to four times as much).
It’s hard to make a battery-electric version of a long-haul truck, like EV startup Nikola is working on, as the batteries required to deliver the distance weigh a lot and take hours to recharge.
But the case for a school bus — which needs only limited range of mileage, and has plenty of idle time to recharge — is much simpler. And the advantages to the traditional buses are clear.
They’re much better, and their savings are much greater once you actually get them into the depot.
Sue Gander
Director at the World Resources Institute
Not only do electric school buses, or ESBs, help the environment — by not expelling diesel fumes or other emissions —they’re also better for the children they carry, particularly those suffering from chronic respiratory conditions such as asthma.
Like other electric vehicles, ESBs are also likely to have lower maintenance costs over time than…
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