So! Our icebreaker today is about pet peeves. OK, I’ll go first. I dislike any suggestion, here in August, that summer is over. I love summer, autumn doesn’t start until September 23rd, and while many districts are already back in school, with bus fleets in full operation (God bless you!), it is technically still summer, my favorite season. Please write back with your own pet peeve; I’ll enjoy it but won’t share it with anyone. Great to see many of you last month at the Green Bus Summit in Reno! School Transportation News just published my key takeaways from that, including findings from a rigorous GreenPower ESB pilot project in West Virginia.
This issue includes:
- What Proterra’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy means, and doesn’t mean
- Best source of ESB adoption data to date, with overview
- CARB-based diesel deadline challenged in Oregon by many
- Update on repowers
Proterra’s Chapter 11 Vs Its Successes
Proterra, which makes the batteries and drivetrains for Thomas Built’s electric Jouley school buses, as well as many other electric buses and trucks, made a Chapter 11 announcement on August 7, 2023. In essence, Proterra is looking for investors or buyers for its three business lines and seeking legal protection from its heavy debt-load (bills). Proterra’s three business lines are batteries and drivetrains, electric transit buses (especially unprofitable for them) and charging infrastructure.
I’ll note that SMART, the public transit fleet in Wilsonville, Oregon, chose Proterra years ago to supply both its e-buses and chargers, in order to get 100% accountability on performance. In other words, the e-bus vendor and charging vendor could not blame each other if problems arose. That deployment went very well; I think the above strategy is a good one.
Back to the Chapter 11. A bus fleet’s prime worry when a vendor seems unstable is that their buses may no longer be serviced under warranty, or parts may no longer available. Stranded, expensive assets are a scary prospect. (Incidentally, the parts-no-longer-available problem happens with older diesel buses, and isn’t unique to new technologies.) Will Thomas Built, which depends on Proterra’s products for its electric Jouley models, fulfill the warranties of its Jouleys on the road and those on order? I asked them. No reply as of this writing.
Let’s look at the bigger picture of ESBs and the market transformation of fossil-fueled to electric. The big three school bus original equipment manufacturers (OEM’s) are Blue Bird, Thomas Built and IC Bus (International), named in the order in which they started deploying ESBs. School districts and Tribes have decades-long relationships with these companies. Because it’s now widely agreed that the future is electric, these are sometimes called legacy companies, even as they do make and sell a small number of ESBs. In contrast, other OEMs only make electric; their buses are called purpose-built, and these include GreenPower, Lion and BYD. Purpose-builts don’t have decades of fossil-fueled profits backing them financially. It’s an unequal playing field.
I suggest Proterra has succeeded more than it has failed. It pioneered and deployed electric transit buses long before the federal government started its massive recent investment clean transportation. ESBs, and their escalating rate of adoption mentioned below, are standing on the shoulders of Proterra and a few other companies and bus fleets who took chances and went first.
When a fleet buys a purpose-built ESB, 100% of their purchase dollars go to an electric-based company, and therefore support market transformation. In contrast, when a fleet buys a legacy-built ESB, many of those purchase dollars go to the general expenses and profits of a fossil-fuel based company, and a much smaller percentage goes toward market transformation. I suggest EPA’s CSBP funding program needs to reflect that. For example, the program could reimburse 100% of purpose-built purchases, as opposed to, say, 68% of the cost of a legacy-built ESB purchase. Treating them the same just puts the purpose-built OEMs at a sharper economic disadvantage than they’re already at.
ESB Adoption Is Accelerating
This nine-tab, user-friendly Electric School Bus Dashboard by World Resources Institute is steadily updated as Tribes and districts deploy ESBs and land funding for them. That said, not everything gets recorded immediately, so some of the below may be underestimates. After the EPA’s Clean School Bus Program announces this autumn the winners of the grant competition that closed on August 22nd, the second data-point below will move upward.
- 1,289 ESBs are on the road in 40 states and U.S. territories
- 4,696 additional ESBs are committed (funding has been landed)
- The largest share of ESBs are in the most disadvantaged districts, which have the worst air quality – good!
- Over 70 districts have ESB commitments that amount to 50% or more of their fleet
- 5.5 million students attend districts with ESBs already on the road
- Top ESB states include Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Florida and Georgia (measured by gross numbers of ESBs, not per capita)
- California has the most ESBs, unsurprisingly
Pushback on CARB In Oregon
Also unsurprisingly, Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is getting pushback on the abrupt CARB deadlines on diesel purchases I mentioned in last month’s newsletter. The commercial truck sector objected early on. And Oregon Pupil Transportation Association (OPTA) has expressed in two letters to DEQ, plus last month in an STN podcast, that it’s not possible to comply on the currently named January 1, 2024 deadline. No word back from DEQ yet. Ironically, Oregon’s public transit bus sector asked for and received a waiver on CARB, with the yellow bus sector never having been invited to the decision-making table. (As in most states, school buses outnumber transit buses here about seven to one.)
I believe Oregon’s excellent school bus fleets are just as able as any fleet to move to electric, but have not yet received state support, Volkswagen funding being one example. I’ve included all Oregon state legislators in my newsletter distribution list this month, and am extending a friendly challenge to them to create a solid funding program for ESBs in Oregon, such as their Midwestern counterparts have done. Possibly they may be hearing at some point from school bus fleets about CARB, as it currently stands, potentially blocking their ability to transport students to school.
My next newsletter will come out in mid-late September, then I’ll take October off, newsletter-wise, and start working along with other partners on a project called MOVER (Microgrid Opportunities: Vehicles Enhancing Resiliency). I’ve long advocated for ESB’s famously large and available battery-packs to benefit local communities; see my piece The ABC’s of Vehicle To Grid.
Financial support for this newsletter is provided in part by the World Resources Institute. While the World Resources Institute may engage as a partner on content, it does not control, nor does it necessarily endorse, the contents of this newsletter.
Thanks!
Alison Wiley (she/her/hers)
Electric School Bus Newsletter
I am on the ancestral lands of the Multnomah, Chinook and Cowlitz peoples.
Whose land are you on?