While bus drivers remain way too scarce, orders for electric buses are abundant, both in the school bus world and the public transit world. Lots of tension in that. If you’re struggling to find drivers to operate your routes, how do you deal with a new, disruptive technology—even given the consensus that electric is the future, and actually the present moment for more fleets every month?
No easy answers. But with so many people new or semi-new to electric buses, I’m doing something new in this issue. Rather than focusing on a single topic, I’ll assume that different people need different things, and I’ll also point you to those things. I’ll also assume that evergreen (consistently relevant) information is the most helpful, as opposed to more deciduous (changeable) information, like range and cost of e-buses.
I’m Alison Wiley here in Oregon, founder of this newsletter and of the Electric Bus Learning Project (EBLP)*. We serve primarily bus fleets, though people from government, nonprofits, consulting firms, and the clean tech industry read this newsletter as well. Why am I personally invested in all this? I love buses, the people who ride and operate them, and our shared climate. And electric buses improve the health of everything I love.
Overview and Basics
Most U.S. bus fleets, both school and public transit, are still 100% fossil fueled. Thousands of those, though, are eyeing e-buses, whether riding/driving them (a great introduction), or looking at funding sources. Many are reading about them and observing their peers who are running e-buses. Much of the information needed for getting off the ground is the same for both types of bus fleets.
Ten Things Bus Fleets Need To Electrify, Part I and Part II Examples: peer to peer learning (credible and affordable). Training and inclusion of staff. Collaborative leadership (women tend to excel at this). A relationship with your utility. Funding. Nonprofit advocacy (World Resources Institute is a good example, and it is also funding the e-bus advocacy of some other nonprofits). Fleet transition plans, beyond pilot projects.
Electric Bus 101 Primer, by Center For Transportation and the Environment (primer starts on slide 11). Rather than gallons of diesel, your bus’s fuel will be measured in kilowatt hours (kWh). Rather than horsepower, your propulsion system will deliver kilowatts (kw’s). Different, but learnable.
Equity And Electric Buses: Six Principles For Combining Them I’ve learned that equity isn’t a box for me to check, but an ingredient I need to bake with from the beginning. Let’s all learn how to do that. Low income and minority populations breathe the worst air in the U.S., while having the least access to health care. The benefits of zero-emissions buses need to land first with these folks. Funding opportunities typically reflect that. School Bus Fleet reprinted this article of mine, incidentally.
Top 10 Tips For Electrifying Your Bus Fleet – gleaned from people deploying them.
Charging and Utilities (the new fuel providers)
Charging infrastructure, along with ensuring equity, is the hardest part of electrifying. Grab it by the horns! A utility suddenly becoming your fuel provider is . . . weird, until you start speaking its language. What is ‘vehicle-to-grid” (V2G), and does it apply to your bus fleet or not?
Ten FAQ’s, Or, How To Speak Utility If you only have time to follow one of these links, this one probably has the most valuable information that isn’t easily found elsewhere.
Primer on Electric Bus Charging (starts at slide 11) by Center For Transportation and the Environment. Explains charge management and AC (Level 2) vs DC (Level 3, i.e. fast) charging, and shows two case studies of deployments.
Plain Talk About Vehicle To Grid (V2G) What does V2G mean for a bus fleet? How many cell phones could be powered by a bus battery using its bidirectional capability? Why is V2G an option for school bus fleets but not public transit?
How To Bake Equity Into the V2G Proposition? School Transportation News published this article of mine on how local communities might consider using their electric school buses for microgrid resiliency centers in power outages.
Training, also a Union Perspective
Bus drivers being on board with electric buses, beginning with your pilot, is a make or break. Mechanics, too. The chronic shortage of drivers (and mechanics thus having to drive) makes these truths sharper than ever. Training can ease staff’s fears and resistance to change. Moreover, it creates professional growth.
Electric Bus Training Tips An expert says, “Train first on core fundamentals, not on a particular product”. A driver’s skill (especially a light foot) is a key determinant of an e-bus’s range on a given day.
An ATU Union Leader’s Perspective on Electric Buses “We want to succeed at this . . . we need training beyond that which the manufacturers give us.”
Feel free, as a number of readers have done, to reply to this e-newsletter with comments, etc. Last month I heard back from a Transportation Director in a rural school district who was finding their deployment of their first electric bus really challenging. “I think you need a solid .25 FTE (full time equivalency) to take on a new technology like this. We just don’t have that.” I agree with the need for solid support. I imagine that a dense web of peer to peer learning may be more accessible and affordable to many bus fleets than new FTE.
A small step toward that dense peer-learning web is the Electric Bus experiential session I’ll be moderating at the School Transportation News (STN) conference this December 4-9 in Reno, Nevada. My panel will be diverse! Tomorrow October 29 is the last day to register at early bird rates. Looking forward to seeing some of you there, also to attending the electric bus session that World Resources Institute will be moderating at this same conference on infrastructure and charging. So much to learn!
Alison Wiley (she/her/hers)
I am on the ancestral lands of the Multnomah, Chinook and Cowlitz peoples.
Whose land are you on?