The Wheels on These Buses Go Round and Round With Zero Emissions
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/climate/electric-school-buses.html
Source: By Brad Plumer, The New York Times.
Excerpt: WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — “Some of the kids call it the singing bus,” said Juliessa Diclo Cruz, 10, as she rode in back of one of New York State’s first-ever electric school buses on a chilly October morning. ...the five new battery-powered buses in White Plains, which went into service this fall, run so quietly that they have to play a four-tone melody for safety as they roam the streets. The school district’s five singing buses — which cost $365,000 apiece, more than three times the price of a new diesel bus with modern pollution controls — are still a rarity. Of the roughly 480,000 school buses in the United States, only a few hundred are fully electric. But that’s slowly changing. State officials are looking to limit children’s exposure to the harmful exhaust from older diesel buses. They’re also increasingly concerned about the carbon emissions that drive global warming. At the same time, the price of electric buses, while still out of reach for most school districts, keeps falling as technology improves. ...Similar experiments are proliferating across the country. California has already spent millions of dollars to help budget-strapped school districts purchase dozens of new electric buses, while New York and Massachusetts have funded their own smaller projects. Many cities, including Los Angeles and Seattle, have also begun purchasing electric buses for their mass transit fleets. Those efforts could soon get a boost from an unlikely source. In 2016, after Volkswagen was caught cheating on emissions tests for its diesel engines, the company agreed to pay $2.9 billion into state funds to help clean up the excess nitrogen oxide pollution its diesel cars had put into the air....
Source: By Brad Plumer, The New York Times.
Excerpt: WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — “Some of the kids call it the singing bus,” said Juliessa Diclo Cruz, 10, as she rode in back of one of New York State’s first-ever electric school buses on a chilly October morning. ...the five new battery-powered buses in White Plains, which went into service this fall, run so quietly that they have to play a four-tone melody for safety as they roam the streets. The school district’s five singing buses — which cost $365,000 apiece, more than three times the price of a new diesel bus with modern pollution controls — are still a rarity. Of the roughly 480,000 school buses in the United States, only a few hundred are fully electric. But that’s slowly changing. State officials are looking to limit children’s exposure to the harmful exhaust from older diesel buses. They’re also increasingly concerned about the carbon emissions that drive global warming. At the same time, the price of electric buses, while still out of reach for most school districts, keeps falling as technology improves. ...Similar experiments are proliferating across the country. California has already spent millions of dollars to help budget-strapped school districts purchase dozens of new electric buses, while New York and Massachusetts have funded their own smaller projects. Many cities, including Los Angeles and Seattle, have also begun purchasing electric buses for their mass transit fleets. Those efforts could soon get a boost from an unlikely source. In 2016, after Volkswagen was caught cheating on emissions tests for its diesel engines, the company agreed to pay $2.9 billion into state funds to help clean up the excess nitrogen oxide pollution its diesel cars had put into the air....