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Logan Bus in New York City had the first repowered diesel bus to electric on the streets in 2021.
he nation’s appetite for electric school buses (ESBs) is growing in a way that suggests a school bus figuratively bursting at the seams with hundreds of students all trying to make the same time to class. Four times more school bus fleets applied for fed-
eral funding for ESBs in 2022 than the first round of EPA’s Clean School Bus Program funding could accommodate with its first $1 billion dollar round of rebates. The waitlist, which is the applicant list minus those that won grants, is 71 pages long. It’s important to note, very few of the schools on that list will get rebates. Many of the applicant school districts are in states like Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, and New York, which have emission reduction or elec- tric school bus mandates. Austin Independent School District in Texas, which is on the waitlist, recently committed to operating an all-electric fleet by 2035. Similar bills are in Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts and Washington state. New ESBs cost three times more than a new diesel bus and can take a
year or more from order to arrival. Many districts have no time to wait. But school buses repowered with electric drivetrains are different. In the transit bus space, Complete Coach Works (CCW) has repowered 65 buses from diesel to electric since 2015, logging more than 3 million repowered miles across numerous fleets, including IndyGo in India- napolis, Indiana. “Our repowers cost just over half a new electric bus,” said Brad Carson, CCW’s chief operating officer. He noted, however, that school buses are regulated differently than transit buses and that it’s not yet economical for CCW to repower school buses. In 2021, New York-based contractor Logan Bus Company partnered
with nearby Unique Electric Solutions (UES) on a repowered Blue Bird Type C school bus. To date, Logan Bus has three repowers that have logged more than 2,100 miles moving students in multiple school dis- tricts, performing well enough to warrant an order for two more. “We want to be the company that went through all the hiccups already,” said Corey Muirhead, Logan Bus executive vice president. The UES shop’s being in the same city means they quickly assist when
issues arise, he added. In December 2021, Midwest Transit Equipment (MTE), of Kankakee,
Illinois, announced a 10,000-unit partnership with global electric drive- train leader SEA Electric (SEA), an Australian company with a global reach. It has logged more than two million miles in commercial truck and van electrification. The companies’ first transformed type C school buses are slated to hit the road in Illinois this year.
This IC Bus CE looks like any other internal combustion engine model. But it’s been “transformed” with an electric drive by Midwest Transit Equipment and SEA Electric.
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