Mid-Atlantic Electric School Bus Experience Project
These days, it seems like every automaker offers a plug-in electric model. Well now, we’re seeing an upturn in the number of larger passenger vehicles making that EV switch too. So, for millions of school students, that means their ride to school is about to get cleaner and quieter.
Nearly every day, in virtually every community and neighborhood around the country, 500,000 yellow buses hit the streets, transporting 26 million children to and from school. Taken as a whole, school buses make up the nation’s largest public transportation network, but about 95% of those buses run on diesel fuel. That puts the most vulnerable members of our populace at risk for respiratory problems and other issues linked to breathing exhaust fumes.
The recent growth of electrification for cars and trucks presents an opportunity to change that, and the recent infrastructure law includes two and a half billion dollars in federal aid, specifically to help school districts purchase zero-emission electric school buses and an equal amount for other low emission and electrified vehicles.
But making the electric switch requires education for those who will manufacture, purchase and use those buses, and that’s where programs like MEEP come into play. Meep is the Mid-Atlantic Electric School Bus Experience Project, spearheaded by the Virginia Clean Cities coalition and begun with funding from the US Department of Energy in 2019.
MEEP is working with bus manufacturers, school districts, and other partners to provide hands-on experience and extended demonstration loans of electric school buses to school bus fleets throughout Virginia, Maryland, DC, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey over the next two years.
ALLEYN HARNED: We’ve kicked off the program and already done more than twenty successful demonstrations, as well as six virtual events. This has led to the deployment of 100 electric school buses within the region.
JOHN DAVIS: This bus, known as Jouley, is manufactured by Thomas Built Buses in North Carolina, using an electric propulsion system developed by Proterra, and already proven through 8 million service miles on electric transit buses across America. Jouley has a driving range of about 138 miles and can recharge in just 3 hours using a DC fast charger.
JIM BEASLEY: Well, the routes that it runs. It runs in the AM and the PM mostly, predominantly. They’re easy to charge because there’s downtime in between, and they’re sitting overnight. They’re quiet, they run through the neighborhoods, and they’re non-polluters.
JOHN DAVIS: the electrification of school buses is gaining a groundswell of support from community leaders, parents and the students themselves.
SPEAKER: I am so proud of our students and the awareness they have, and they know now is the time to take the environmental legacy into their hands.
PAUL D’ANDRADE: And the main thing is about our kids, you know. We want them to have the opportunity to have zero emission buses, to have a nice quiet ride, and less effects on their health.
Our total amount of buses is just over 1600. We have eight electric buses, and we have ten we should get sometime next school year, and we put in the application for another grant for an additional ten.
JOHN DAVIS: Electrifying our nation’s school bus fleet won’t happen overnight. That 2-and-a-half billion dollars is expected to add about 10,000 electric buses to the national total over the next five years; but it’s an investment that will continue to pay huge dividends in awareness and one that will drive us towards a cleaner future for generations to come.
EV Sales
The headlines are everywhere: electric vehicle sales are down! Dealers are swamped with unsold EVs! Car companies are doubling down on internal-combustion engines! The EV era is over before it began! And so on…
You know, there’s a lot of misinformation swirling around these days about the state of the current EV market. So, what are the facts and where might EVs go from here?
We’re in the midst of the most revolutionary shake up of the automotive market since the car replaced the horse as our preferred form of personal transportation back in the early 1900s. Then, as now, drivers faced the same decision of choosing petrol or electric power for their cars, and carmakers offered both options.
As it turned out, the rapid expansion of our interstate road system outpaced the electrification of rural America, paving the way for petroleum to take the lead in widespread availability, and to largely squeeze electrics out of the car market. Fast forward a hundred years: America is now wired from coast to coast, and advances in battery technology have made it possible for electric vehicles to perform competitively with gas and diesel models.
But more importantly, environmental concerns have become an important factor in determining our fuel of choice, fostering the second coming of the electric vehicle.
Now EV sales, including both plug-in hybrids and pure battery electrics, are surging beyond the early adopter and novelty stage, rising 46.5% in 2022 and 53.8% in 2023, achieving a record 9% of the total car market last year. After such rapid growth, some moderation was expected, but are EV sales really falling as headlines proclaim?
The short answer is no. While growth has slowed, plug-in vehicles still grew 17% in the first quarter of 2024, increasing their market share further as overall car sales rose only 5%.
JOHN O’DONNELL: “There’s a lot of articles and media suggesting that we’ve already reached a plateau for EV sales, and that’s false, that’s incorrect. The rate of adoption is slowing, but it’s still increasing nationwide. State by state, it varies.The coasts, east and west coasts, have the higher penetration. The center of the country is adopting at a more slow rate, but make no mistake, this is not going away simply because somebody wrote an article.”
Another trend we’ve noticed is that consumers’ preferred type of EV is shifting. For all of 2023, about 80% of EVs sold were pure battery electric. But plug-in gasoline-electric hybrid sales are growing, and currently make up a quarter of total EV sales.
When faced with the EV market’s three-headed conundrum: limited number of affordable battery electric choices, fear of range anxiety, and a public charging infrastructure that’s still a work in progress, many buyers see plug in hybrids as a safe near-term bridge to eventually going all-electric. And that shift is now forecast to widen for the foreseeable future, as manufacturers release more new PHEVs into the market.
JOHN O’DONNELL: “Consumer affordability is always on our minds, representing the people who sell the cars, but it’s also on the mind of the state, local and federal governments. They know that they need to help us balance the amount of technology, which costs money through research and development, and what the average consumer can afford.”
The good news for consumers is that EV prices are already coming down, and, with dozens of new electric vehicles of all types expected to enter the market over the next 18 months, there is little doubt that such increased competition will cause EV prices to moderate even further. Thus, most market experts are still conservatively predicting EVs to pass the 12% market share point for all of 2024, and 15%, or over 2 million new EVs on the road, in 2025.
Add to that continuing improvements in driving range and charging infrastructure, and the future of EVs in America is still quite bright. American consumers are smart enough to question the naysayers. They know that the time is finally right for the electric automobile to come into its own. It’s not only the best thing for the environment, it just makes good driving sense.