School buses, especially in cities, are perfect vehicles to be electric: They have set, predictable routes and return to the same place every day for charging. And being fleet vehicles, the cost savings in fuel and especially maintenance will be immediately noticeable.
NHPR notes in this story (right here) that there’s $9 million in the VW settlement for such buses but nobody in the state has applied for it.
One possible reason: Most school districts don’t own their buses but lease them from private companies. Although it seems to me the private companies would have the same ROI, so I’m not sure why that holds them back.
A NY Times story (here) says that only a few districts around the country have made the switch, put off by the much higher purchase cost, at least twice a stinky diesel bus. There are also costs associated with setting up a powerful enough charging station for a lot of buses; I’ve seen articles about utilities charging hundreds of thousands or even millions to hook that into the grid.
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