... $1 billion in grants to purchase about 2,500
<scare-quote>clean</scare-quote> school buses under a new federal
program. ... Only about 1% of the nation's 480,000 school buses were
electric as of last year ...
That's $400,000 per bus!
According to the American School Superintendents Association (AASA), a
new ICE school bus costs about $50,000. That appears to be 1/8th the
price of these EV buses. You're not going to get many schools to adopt
them at that price.
Judging by our local ICE school buses, it can't be that difficult to
convert them into EVs. The distance they drive per day is short (under
100 miles). The speeds are low, and they don't require fast
acceleration. There is a huge amount of room under the bus, due to the
high floor. Even a big old forklift motor and industrial lead-acid
batteries may be able to do the job.
Maybe some high school shop class should take on the challenge of
converting one? According to the same website, the annual cost to
operate and maintain a school bus is around $5500 per year. Most of this
is for fuel. So there could be quite a savings to converting what you
already have.
Lee Hart
--
"#3 pencils and quadrille pads." -- Seymour Cray, when asked
what CAD tools he used to design the Cray I supercomputer
--
Lee Hart, 814 8th Ave N, Sartell MN 56377, www.sunrise-ev.com
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