Ideally, rezoning and infrastructure changes would reduce the need for school buses. We don’t have the time though, so this is a win. Hopefully production can ramp up and governments can create incentives for schools to buy these instead of dead dino powered buses.
School busses are one of the perfect fits for electric engines:
Set schedule with down time to charge Specific route with known distances. Heavy and must drive up hills: which benefit from amazing torque generated by Electric engines. Large internal space for battery storage
Just pray Muskrat doesn’t somehow win the bid. We’ll never see them
Elon would do something ridiculous like buy Lyft for 10 billion too much and require drivers to use Teslas. He would then get a cost+percentage transportation contract. He then gold plates the interior components after a few years so the cost is higher, therefore the percentage is bigger.
You’re forgetting the most important feature, usb charging ports for every seat
I saw a video of the latest Tesla model 3 2024 and it has one USB charging port inside the center console lol.
There are also 2 in the back, below the screen/hvac, and there is a dual wireless charger up front, so that’s probably enough isn’t it?
Starting in a warm building can really help - the cabin is warm and the battery is warm when setting off, without using any of the battery.
To expand on that, couldn’t you also have a separate power source to warm up the bus before it was taken out on a cold morning? Something like an engine block heater for an ICE vehicle.
7% at the end of a ~300mi roundtrip rural run is really cutting it close 😳 although if the journey is mostly flat I think it’s OK, as long as there’s enough range to go via any diversion if the road is blocked.
They could definitely get a bigger battery onto that roof, the main expense there probably would be customising the aircon to fit around a roof battery pack instead of buying one off the shelf
The electric buses here all have roof mounted batteries and they last pretty long - the chinese Yutongs are out all day with the heating on, but our domestic built ones seem to last only 3/4 of the day, and after that they vanish with the old diesel ones appearing on routes until the night
Or maybe just put a charging point in at thge driver’s lunchtime rest stop
Great, but I can guarantee most school boards can’t afford it
how many school routes are 480km?