AUTONEWS

Electric school bus delivered across US under EPA's $5 billion grant program

If you think you're seeing too many electric cars, trucks, and SUVs on the roads these days, start taking a look at school buses in your city.

Using funding provided by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act of 2021, EPA expanded the new Clean School Bus (CSB) program. The EPA announced on September 29 that it would nearly double the funding awarded for clean school buses this year, following high demand from school districts across the United States that requested the 2022 CSB rebates.

The program will now provide up to $5 billion over the next five years (U.S. government fiscal years 2022-2026) to replace existing ICE-powered school buses with zero-emission, low-emission models.

"The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act of 2021 authorizes the EPA to offer rebates for replacing existing school buses with clean, zero-emissions (ZE) models to reduce harmful emissions from older, dirtier buses," an EPA statement states.

The 2022 refund application period ended in August with applications from school districts in all 50 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and federally recognized tribes. Everyone is looking to buy low-emission, electric school buses.

In total, the EPA received nearly 2,000 orders requesting nearly $4 billion to replace more than 12,000 buses. The 2022 rebate program will fund approximately 2,500 of these applications. The remainder will be considered over the remaining four years of the program.

Announced awards for 2022 nearly doubled the $500 million originally allocated, bringing the figure to $913 million due to widespread interest in the program. Vouchers awarded in this initial round of EPA funding are conditional on ordering buses from October 2022 to April 2023 and installing the charging infrastructure and delivering the vehicles by October 2024.

First EV Bus Delivered...Lion Electric Co. is a Quebec-based manufacturer of medium and heavy-duty all-electric vehicles. This week, the company announced that it has completed delivery of its first LionC zero-emissions school bus funded by the CSB program. The bus was delivered to the Mount Desert Island Regional School System in Bar Harbor, Maine. The bus was manufactured at Lion's new factory in Joliet, Illinois. The plant is initially focused solely on producing all-electric school buses that qualify for these EPA grants.

When it reaches capacity, Lion expects this facility to be able to produce up to 20,000 medium and heavy-duty vehicles annually. Electric bus deliveries have also been completed to schools in Wabaunsee County, Kansas, and the Big Valley Unified School District in Northern California.

“It is very exciting for us to deliver our first LionC 'made in America' funded by an EPA Clean School Bus Program grant,” said Nate Baguio, senior vice president of business development for Lion Electric. “We are pleased to support Mount Desert, both in their adoption of zero-emission school buses and their commitment to the health of students and the community.”

Touching all the bases...In addition to building buses and trucks, Lion offers charging infrastructure with LionEnergy, proprietary EV telematics with LionBeat, financial assistance with LionCapital Solutions, driver/maintenance/safety training from Lion's BrightSquad, and financial support assistance provided by the LionGrants team.

To date, Lion claims the company has deployed more than 800 mid-size and heavy-duty all-electric vehicles that have covered more than 10 million miles in real-world conditions. According to the company, each fully electric Lion bus put into operation can eliminate up to 23 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year, preventing human exposure to hazardous particulate emissions from diesel engines.

Jeff Zurschmeide, Detroit-USA