The Next EV Push Is an Overhaul of the Iconic American School Bus
US school districts are eager to electrify their bus fleets, and billions of dollars in new funding is getting them started
By Zahra Hirji and Denise Lu for Bloomberg Green + Technology
The American school bus of the future won’t differ too much from its current iconic design: The wheels will still go round and round, the horn will go honk, honk, honk, and the wipers will swish, swish, swish. But if the transition from fossil fuels continues to accelerate, the engine won’t go vroom, vroom, vroom. It won’t make much noise at all, because it will be electric.
Most school buses today run on diesel. The climate footprint of a diesel school bus is about 3.3 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per mile, more than double the per-mile footprint (roughly 1.5 pounds of CO2e) for a bus powered on the average US electric grid, according to Argonne National Laboratory. If a large share of the American school bus fleet — the largest mass transportation system in the country — electrifies, that would translate to a significant emissions cut.
What’s more, diesel exhaust is carcinogenic. And specific components of the tailpipe fumes, such as particulate matter and nitrogen oxides (NOx), are linked to asthma and other respiratory problems in children.
“This is really a health issue,” says Almeta Cooper, national manager for health equity with the environmental group Moms Clean Air Force. But with almost a half-million school buses on the road daily, “it’s so much part of the scenery, people don’t even realize,” she says. That’s why Cooper and other parent activists have spent recent years rallying behind the electric bus. Now, she says, the technology is finally starting to gain traction.
The number of electric school buses in the US is about to soar
Nearly 1,000 had been delivered by the end of 2022, and at least 4,000 more are coming across the country.
