Going electric isn’t as easy as simply purchasing a bus and a charger Written by Taylor Ekbatani |
taylor@stnonline.com
investment. Playing a major role in that adoption alongside school districts are private, for-profit school bus con- tractors that must make a true business case for electric school buses. School Transportation News caught up with both public and private examples to gauge their experiences and lessons learned.
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Dean Transportation, Michigan A family-run operation out of Michigan, Dean
Transportation is just starting its electric journey. Christopher Dean, the company’s director of innova- tion, explained that Dean Transportation is the largest yellow school bus operator in the state with about 1,600 vehicles, which are currently mostly diesel. He noted that there are some gasoline and propane buses, but the push toward electric has similarly led to company officials educating themselves on the electrification process. “We’re proud to deploy our first handful of units [three]
this calendar year, with plans to deploy more in 2024 and 2025,” he said, adding the buses are made possible by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Clean School Bus Program and other grant opportunities. Dean added that he’s leading the charge on electrifi-
cation for the company, and the first bus is expected to be on the ground this month in Cadillac, Michigan. “We’re choosing to take a very steady, well-educated approach to this,” he noted. “We see electrification and
24 School Transportation News • JUNE 2023
s school districts embark on their electric jour- neys, there are bound to be snafus along the way. The technology is evolving, and there are many things to consider before making a steep
electric school buses as the future, but we’re doing ev- erything we can to learn the ins and outs of the bus and the charging. There are a lot of facility implications, and so we’re really working hard as a team to learn those and deploy a handful units at a time to learn where things go well, where they don’t go well. As we ramp up, we’ll know better what to expect when we start converting more of our fleet and replacing diesel buses and internal combustion engines with our electric units.”
Fremont Unified School District, California Fremont Unified School District has 85 school buses
with about 45 currently on the road. Director of Trans- portation Ernest Epley added that when the district is fully staffed, they have about 60 drivers behind the wheel, but like at most other districts there is a short- age. Fremont’s bus fleet is comprised of 49 smaller, 20-passenger or less buses and 35 larger, 66-passenger or more buses. Of the big buses, he said 13 are diesel fuel, adding that the rest are broken down between CNG (eight buses) or electric (14 buses). Currently, the district is working on replacing four more of the larger diesel buses with electric. The smaller buses, which are used to transport students with special needs, and run on deisel, will all be replaced with electric through var- ious federal and state grants, hopefully within the next three to five years. Epley noted that the district plans on continuing to
operate the CNG buses, as they were purchased via a grant and there is a specific replacement plan in place. “If I had it my way and in a perfect world, I would
probably be about 85 to 90 percent electric with that 10 percent being reserved for the trips that that are beyond
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