SPECIAL REPORT Power Supply
No matter the fuel or energy used, skyrocketing new purchase costs are forcing student transporters to extend vehicle life Written By Ryan Gray |
ryan@stnonline.com
I
n not quite two years, the school bus industry has endured several once-in-a-lifetimes. First, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools and pretty much the rest of society. Supply chain disruptions,
long bubbling under the surface, erupted. Now inflation has set a chokehold. Amid these challenges, school districts are setting
their sights on the mode of power for their next bus and fleet vehicles purchases, decisions that in some states are largely being made for them by politicians: Zero emissions, at least from the tailpipe. For this industry, so far, zero emissions translate to
battery-electric school buses, though other renewable alternatives are showing promise. But for all the environ- mental and operational savings benefits of these electric vehicles, there is consensus even from the most ardent advocates they are not developed to the point required— range, operational reliability, manufacturing output, grid resiliency, etc.—for massive, widescale adoption. Certain- ly, the numbers in the pipeline are impressive, spurred largely by federal and state grants. Even then, money awarded might only cover a fraction
of the eventual purchase price for buses. Electric school buses are becoming more expensive, due to suddenly increasing battery costs due to shortages in lithium. That spells unwelcomed news for school districts that win U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Clean School Bus Program rebate funds this fall, regardless, if their applica- tions specified electric or not. Internal combustion engine school buses aren’t immune to increasing production costs and resulting vehicle surcharges. “We’re not seeing any of those [surcharges] roll back
yet, even though at least at the commodity level, some of those prices have retreated,” commented Steve Tam, vice president of commercial truck and bus analyst ACT Research. “Of course, this begs the question, is there a structural issue going on here whereby once the genie’s out of the bottle, it’s not going back in? I’m afraid there’s probably some validity to that thought.” He added that progress is being made on supply chain
constraints but not fast enough to allow manufacturers to reduce record backorders. The result will be continued delays in delivering on most new orders, which spells a dilemma for school districts and bus companies. “They’ve been denied replacement level kinds of vol-
14 School Transportation News • OCTOBER 2022
umes for the last two years,” Tam observed. Patrick Couch, the senior vice president of technical ser-
vices for alternative clean technology consultant Gladstein, Neandross & Associates, likened the current procurement cycles faced by school districts to having the capital spend- ing rug pulled out from beneath them. “The way they’re going to have to deal with this is, well, we were going to get 20 but now we’re going to have to get 16,” he explained. “What we typically see in those cases with a lot of fleets, but definitely the school bus fleets, is that they just try to keep the existing units that they have working, even though they’re past their service life.” Considering at least 80 percent of the legacy fleet is
powered by diesel, according to this magazine’s analysis of annual manufacturing data, replacement levels could be further impacted by the EPA’s proposed rulemaking to further reduce oxides of nitrogen emissions from heavy-duty engines. NOx emissions would be reduced by at least 47 to as much as 60 percent by 2045. As reported in March, when the EPA solicited pub-
lic comments to its proposal for updating the existing Heavy-Duty Greenhouse Gas Emissions Phase 2 pro- gram, engine and vehicle manufacturers would have two options to obtain compliance. The first would require reducing NOx emissions in model-year in two steps, beginning with an 82.5-percent reduction for model-year 2027-2030 engines to 0.02 grams per brake horsepower-hour (g/bhp-hr). Then, for model-year 2031, NOx reductions would reach 90 percent, though emis- sions could “drift” up to 0.040 g/bhp-hr during the useful extended life. The second option would implement standards with a single step in 2027. Either option for diesel would be difficult if not impos-
sible for OEMs to meet. In a response filed in May, Jackie Yeager, director of emissions and fuel efficiency policy for Cummins, wrote that company design target analysis with updated inputs from the EPA proposal showed that option one is not feasible for diesel and should warrant “no further consideration.” In analyzing the effects of option two, Yeager wrote
that compliance would be “challenging but achievable with advanced technologies in [model year] 2027.” This would mean the latest round of additional and costly en- hancements to diesel systems, such as the dual selective catalytic reduction systems required since 2010. Yeager
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