School Bus Fleet, January 2018

22 SCHOOL BUS FLEET JANUARY 2018 WWW SCHOOLBUSFLEET COM Blue Bird gave attendees a chance to ride around downtown Columbus in its new All American RE electric school bus IC Bus unveiled its new IC Electric Bus ChargE a concept school bus at the NAPT trade show COLUMBUS CONFERENCES Big School Bus OEMs Go Electric By Thomas McMahon and Nicole Schlosser In a sign of the times all three of the major large school bus OEMs showcased new electric models at the NAPT conference Blue Bird gave conference attendees a chance to ride around downtown Columbus in its new All American RE electric school bus Some participants such as Adam James director of transportation for Greenville S C County Schools commented on the vehicles smooth quiet operation The Blue Bird All American RE electric bus chassis was developed in conjunction with Adomani Inc and is powered by an electric drivetrain supplied by Efficient Drivetrains Inc EDI The bus has an expected range of 80 to 100 miles from a single charge Blue Birds All American RE electric bus as well as the Micro Bird G5 Type A electric bus are slated to become available in 2018 At the NAPT trade show IC Bus unveiled its new IC Electric Bus ChargE a concept school bus Developed with partner Volkswagen Truck Bus the ChargE is designed to give customers a zero emissions school bus option while lowering the total cost of ownership and offering user friendly options and features with diesel like performance according to the school bus manufacturer IC Bus expects to launch the first ChargE unit in 2019 The concept bus incorporates a common group electric drivetrain from Volkswagen Truck Bus that is created to run quietly and not produce emissions The range of the ChargE can exceed 120 miles according to IC Bus while the powertrain can deliver up to 260 kW about 349 peak horsepower Were proud to introduce our electric powertrain concept vehicle engineered to meet the demands of the 21st century school bus industry said Trish Reed vice president and general manager of IC Bus As battery technology evolves we continue to explore a variety of electric technologies to meet our customers needs in the final design of the CE Series electric powered school bus In another conference session Thomas Built President and CEO Caley Edgerly surprised attendees by driving his companys new electric school bus into the exhibit hall The electric Saf T Liner C2 model dubbed Jouley runs on an EDI PowerDrive 7000EV powertrain and has an approximate range of 100 miles Edgerly said that he foresees Jouley going into early production in 2019 Leslie Kilgore vice president of engineering for Thomas Built noted that while the electric bus is expected to carry a purchase price of about three times that of a diesel bus grants and other incentives are being made available to bring it back down to a traditional cost Also the electric buses are expected to significantly reduce operational costs for fueling and maintenance