EPA Awarding Nearly $1 Billion To Schools For Electric Buses (apnews.com) 163
Nearly 400 school districts spanning all 50 states and Washington, D.C., along with several tribes and U.S. territories, are receiving roughly $1 billion in grants to purchase about 2,500 "clean" school buses under a new federal program. From a report: The Biden administration is making the grants available as part of a wider effort to accelerate the transition to zero-emission vehicles and reduce air pollution near schools and communities. Vice President Kamala Harris and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan are set to announce the grant awards Wednesday in Seattle. The new, mostly electric school buses will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save money and better protect children's health, the White House said.
As many as 25 million children ride familiar yellow school buses each school day and will have a "healthier future" with a cleaner fleet, Regan said. "This is just the beginning of our work to ... reduce climate pollution and ensure the clean, breathable air that all our children deserve," he said. Only about 1% of the nation's 480,000 school buses were electric as of last year, but the push to abandon traditional diesel buses has gained momentum in recent years. Money for the new purchases is available under the federal Clean School Bus Program, which includes $5 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law President Joe Biden signed last year.
As many as 25 million children ride familiar yellow school buses each school day and will have a "healthier future" with a cleaner fleet, Regan said. "This is just the beginning of our work to ... reduce climate pollution and ensure the clean, breathable air that all our children deserve," he said. Only about 1% of the nation's 480,000 school buses were electric as of last year, but the push to abandon traditional diesel buses has gained momentum in recent years. Money for the new purchases is available under the federal Clean School Bus Program, which includes $5 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law President Joe Biden signed last year.
It wasn't that long ago (Score:2, Interesting)
It wasn't that long ago that cities were updating to CNG-powered busses, I remember DC Metro investing something like $60m to $70m to retire their Diesel fleet. Those were "clean energy" advertised buses. I'm not sure however that creating a grant demand curve with BEV busses will pan out for school districts. Electric rates aren't zero cost either at the KWh quantities they'll demand and while those costs will be offset by lower maintenance costs, you still have to get the charging current from somewhere.
Re:It wasn't that long ago (Score:5, Informative)
Diesel is close to $6 a gallon here. Last time I did the math it would cost me $8 to fully charge a Tesla. Buses get terrible mileage as they do nothing but stop and start.
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Buses get terrible mileage as they do nothing but stop and start.
This is exactly the reason that milk floats [wikipedia.org] have long been electric when nothing else really was. With regenerative braking I can imagine this could end up being pretty power efficient.
Re:It wasn't that long ago (Score:5, Insightful)
re: well documented route (Score:2)
I'd agree, except when I was in school, the school buses were used for taking field trips too. Often, those were to destinations a lot further away than the homes of the students attending classes.
It wouldn't surprise me if the new EV buses turn out to be fine for their primary application, but they decide they need the traditional diesel ones to do everything else like the field trips.
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The perfect application (Score:5, Interesting)
Buses get terrible mileage as they do nothing but stop and start.
Yes, school busses are pretty much the perfect application for battery electric vehicles. They have a known route, a lot of starting and stopping (for which regenerative braking is useful), and they return to their home base overnight, so they can charge at night when the electrical power rates are low.
Good idea.
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Well, we don't know that yet? I mean it could be 10 busses that could scale to a small solar farm on a few acres. Larger districts or states like New York with 50,000 busses will be a huge demand. School busses are already heavy and that means they won't be as electric-efficient as an EV car that seats four.
This will all flush out and take time but there will be costs whether in bonds/taxes etc. It won't be free, not by a long shot.
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Re:It wasn't that long ago (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, Shanghai has been running electric buses for years, and it seems to be a win both for smog reduction and total cost of ownership. BYD alone built 50,000 electric buses in the nine years to 2019 [sustainable-bus.com], and they aren't the only electric bus manufacturer.
Sydney is gradually rolling out electric buses [nsw.gov.au] using drive trains from Zenobe [zenobe.com] and bodies build locally by Custom Denning. They have solar roofs on the bus depots with large batteries that are used for charging the buses overnight, reducing the required load on the grid. The programme has been a massive success so far.
Why do so many Americans insist that things that have been successfully implemented in multiple countries are impossible, completely impractical or not cost-effective?
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No point feeding the anonymous troll. You are truly wasting your breath. Great references, though!
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Re:It wasn't that long ago (Score:5, Informative)
Who fed you that one? Because this article [scientificamerican.com] says that not only will electric vehicles not strain the grid, but "experts see EV batteries as part of the solution."
Re:It wasn't that long ago (Score:4, Insightful)
> This says it all.
Good thing utilities are doing exactly that, then. Well, can't speak for Texas I guess... Most offer incentives for EV owners to encourage behavior that reduces strain (time of use rates, etc) and to collect data they need for that planning.
This has been over a decade in the making. Utilities are *constantly* repairing and upgrading their networks, and this simply means they need to upgrade things a step up from what they would normally. Do you think people aren't constantly adding load to the grid every day already? They're on top of it... though again, can't speak for Texas.
> Adding capacity costs money, so expect your local utility companies to bond or invest tax dollars to build that.
You need to define "adding capacity" because that's a little ambiguous. If you mean add generating capacity, then that's likely off-base: The utility company that meters the electricity and sends you a bill is likely not the company that actually generates the electricity. There's an entire wholesale market that utilities buy from and pass that cost on to you. *Some* utilities have their own capacity but it's becoming more and more rare and AFAIK they all still buy power off the wholesale market.
If you mean capacity in the grid, see above. They have plans for what their networks need to look like five and ten years out. If anything, seeing governments passing laws and funding EV adoption gives them the certainty they need to make those investments; it's a lot easier to plan for a future that you know is coming.
=Smidge=
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Let's just see we don't agree, unless you're a municipal electric provider or a coop around here you're in the distributed cost model where the transmission services are one company, and the generating companies are another. You can choose your generating company, but you can't choose your transmission company since they own the distribution grid to your home/business.
The transmission companies have a small, fixed rate "customer service" charge and a charge per KWh, during peak months in the summer that can
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> I also don't think anybody is "planning" this, not by a longshot.
Well - unless you live in Texas - it's basically a guarantee you're wrong. Here's a magazine article that I scanned myself [smidgeindustriesltd.com] when it was published in 2011 talking about how Detroit Edison was planning for a future of EVs. I'd like to the website but the article is no longer available... *shrug* Here's a slideshow [jointutilitiesofny.org] from a virtual conference I sat in on last year, literally all about forecasting EV adoption so they can plan the necessary impro
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Oh yeah, out here in Texas we have a small coop power grid that suffers its share of service interruptions from trees, storms, bad/drunk drivers and fires. They are shutting down their Coal based mainline plant and building out Solar based generation and storage. That's good but the rates are going from 14 cents/KWh to 25 cents/KWh next year and then up to over 40 (est.), just like California. Why? it's to pay for the Bonds. The entire governing board is facing a recall. For a time, I owned an inherited hom
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Your average Tesla gets 4 miles per kWh. At (California) 40 cents, that's 10 cents a mile. (Most people in California don't pay that much for electricity to charge.)
California gas prices are $6/gal which takes you about 20 miles... so 30 cents a mile. Three times as expensive.
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Scale that to a school district of say 500 busses. Let's say they have 100KWh batteries and are at 20% charge upon going back to the depot. The busses need to be 100% charged for the afternoon run and for the morning run, so that's twice/day. The 100% charge is to assure parents that the kiddies will get there with a good margin for safety, delays and bad weather, they need their heat and A/C.
70KWh * 500 = 35000KWh * 2 times/day = 70,000KWh per day to run that fleet. That's just a rough estimate of about $2
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According to this [electricitylocal.com]
up to about 35 cents. I don't know where but that sounds like the north east.
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Scale that to a school district of say 500 busses.
Okay. Now the school district has a parking lot large enough to hold 500 buses.
Won't strain the grid [Re:It wasn't that long ago] (Score:2)
...Of course, all this new demand will create more demand for electric power, further straining grid resources. This will be fun to watch.
Exactly the opposite. Busses will charge at night, when the grid is nearly idle, and electricity is cheap. This is an application that fits well with the existing electrical grid.
Maybe some time in the distant future, when solar power is ubiquitous, it may be advantageous to charge during the day. But by that time these busses will have long since past their end of life.
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I just went through the math in another response. Mind you, that was back of a napkin thought and most busses have route that's done one time and most busses do multiple routes daily, one for Elementary, Middle etc. They then wind up parked or back at a depot. Yes, they'll have to charge overnight but depending on capacity it would be better to take into consideration mid-day "downtime" too.
This overnight "low energy demand" thing will go out the wayside if we all have to have electric furnaces.
6.75 [Re:Won't strain the grid] (Score:2)
This overnight "low energy demand" thing will go out the wayside if we all have to have electric furnaces.
If that's really the limiting factor, it's not hard to design to that spec. Nothing is easier to store than low-grade heat. Put 12 hours of thermal ballast into the system.
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Around here it's about 150 to 175 miles/day. The drivers use staggered times/routes and reuse the same busses for multiple pickups and drop-offs, elementary, middle, high school, special needs, and career schools. Then you have traveling sports teams too.
You're also forgetting mid-day back at the depot and you have heat and A/C to consider which means more electrical power utilization. Parents around hear scream if their kids don't have A/C on their busses in August when school starts. These are the same pa
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There's a lot of possibilities but what I also don't like is that they're all grid-tied solutions. What's wrong with Fuel Cells? I mean the first HFC train is now in operation in Germany. [alstom.com] That's the kind of investment I would like to see more of.
Notinng in particular, except that hydrogen is difficult to store. You need either high pressure tanks, very large volume tanks, or cryogenic liquid, all of which have problems.
Batteries are simply simpler.
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5% of the new busses under this program are also CNG or propane, so I guess there is a niche where batteries don't provide enough range or the grid is insufficient or something.
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It wasn't that long ago that cities were updating to CNG-powered busses, I remember DC Metro investing something like $60m to $70m to retire their Diesel fleet. Those were "clean energy" advertised buses.
CNG was clean-ish. You still have emissions (as you still burn oil) but they are massively reduced, and you can ~double oil change periods because there's so much less crap in your blow-by (of which there is always some, which is one reason why there is crankcase ventilation.) And we used to not have to frack to increase natgas production. It's a much better fuel to burn in cities than either gasoline or diesel.
Those same buses could also reasonably be converted from CNG to electric. There are EV buses with
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And? (Score:2)
It's only going to take an additional 191 billion to replace the rest of them*.
* - according to the price, and the number of school buses in the U.S.
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Replacing the full school bus fleet is not what this is for.
This is to create market buzz and pump up stock prices for a handful of BEV school bus making companies.
You know, so the congress-critters can "better themselves", since they bought last week.
Re:And? (Score:4, Informative)
Or, you know, this is just to replace only the busses that would've been replaced anyway now instead of scrapping new vehicles.
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Have you ever actually looked at congresscritters' ability to beat the market?
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It's only going to take an additional 191 billion to replace the rest of them*.
* - according to the price, and the number of school buses in the U.S.
Sounds good to me. The US has spent $191 billion on much worse things.
Cause that's quite a boost. (Score:2)
This is good and all, but does anybody track the timing of purchases of stocks of companies that do busses or whatever?
Costs (Score:5, Informative)
Cue the naysayers who will piss and moan that electric will 1) never work, 2) bankrupt us, while also 3) cause the grid to collapse.
However...
*The cost of electricity is vastly lower than for diesel (per distance traveled).
* EVs have substantially lower maintenance costs.
* EVs have no tailpipe emissions, which around a school environment is extra good.
* EVs have lower well-to-wheel emissions, even if the local grid is 100% coal.
* EVs' well-to-wheel emissions get lower as the grid greens; a diesel gets dirtier with age.
* An electric bus can do a lot of recharging in the middle of the day when solar energy is most available.
* An electric bus will do a lot less screeeeeching of its (mechanical) brakes.
So what would be more worthwhile than comparing purchase price is the total cost of ownership. I don't have that at my fingertips, but my gut tells me an electric bus comes out even, or ahead. Plus they have all manner of ancillary benefits that, if you put most any economic cost to (as opposed externalizing it away), should put these buses way ahead.
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$1 billion for 2500 buses comes out to $400,000 apiece. Yup, that's expensive. By comparison, a new diesel school bus is in the range of $200,000 to $250,000 [google.com] - on the order of 1/2 as much.
They're probably figuring in the cost of the charging infrastructure as well. I suspect that a battery large enough to push a bus around all day is going to need DC fast charging in order to finish charging before morning.
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Your RAV4 Prime also weighs a hell of a lot less, and has a hell of a lot less battery. Comparing the charge time between that and a full size school bus is ridiculous.
Do you really think that a school bus loaded with 30+ kids is going to only use 250 Wh per mile? I would personally bet it would be about 4x that if not more, which means you'll need 4x the charging time at the same rate as your Toyota to recover the same range, all charging efficiencies being equal.
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The school bus is a massive thing, even the diesel might well weigh ten tons. But they also tend to have very smooth, hard tires that do not deform very much (which is part of why buses do so much road damage, besides just the mass) and pickup trucks literally have higher output engines than buses do. We've got a 10-ton Blue Bird transit bus and it has an 8.3 liter Cummins (ISC) but it only puts out 250HP, and has about 660lb-ft torque. The current 6.7 liter Cummins ISB in the Dodge Ram 2500 and 3500 diesel
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A quick bit of research suggests that 150kWh batteries are common for school busses. Seems about right, they travel at low speeds.
The bus will be idle after taking the kids home in the afternoon, so it's say they can charge from 6 PM to 6 AM, a total of 12 hours. That would only need a 12.5kW charger to completely fill the battery. In practice it will be less, because the battery won't need a full charge every day, and there will be some buffer so the usable capacity will be lower.
Anyway, that can easily b
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So then why is a subsidy needed?
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Although the finances probably work out well on paper, it still carries risk. Most school districts probably aren't going to take a flyer (especially with local taxpayer money) on this new technology without some serious prodding. So, here comes the feds with money to alleviate the risk. I doubt any district will get anything close to the money to replace their entire fleet - probably only 1 or 2. But if those 1 or 2 can demonstrate their worth, then that'll make the di
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So then why is a subsidy needed?
In the long run, if it proves out to be cost effective (and it looks like it should be): it won't.
In the short run, early adopters are needed to shake the technology down and demonstrate it works and fits the needs.
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Also, with a basically guaranteed market of $5B in sales, there's incentive for EV bus manufacturers to expand their capacities which will drive costs further down.
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> It's still up for debate if electric actually releases less carbon overall when accounting for the energy production sources and battery and power line requirements (lithium, copper, etc.)
No, it isn't [iop.org].
> How often has your phone battery died or stop holding a charge that can make it through the day, every 5 years?
I don't know why anyone would need this explained to them at this point, but a car is not a cell phone. The way the battery is designed, managed and used is vastly different. Increasingly,
Re:Costs (Score:4, Informative)
It's still up for debate if electric actually releases less carbon overall when accounting for the energy production sources and battery and power line requirements (lithium, copper, etc.).
Those studies have been done before, and they consistently show that even in areas with a high-coal mix, EVs are still cleaner — a lot cleaner. And the cleaner the energy mix, the greater the advantage.
How often has your phone battery died or stop holding a charge that can make it through the day, every 5 years? Now imagine the cost of replacing something 1000 times larger every 5 -10 years, Tesla replacement batteries are the cheapest on the market and sold with zero mark-up on cost and they are still around $20K, and much smaller than a bus would need.
That's really not a credible fear unless the battery was designed wrong. The average lifespan of a Tesla battery is several hundred thousand miles. For a bus that goes double-digit miles per day, you would expect the average battery to last 27 to 46 years, which is way, way longer than the bus will last.
Will they have premature failures? Sure. But there are premature failures of ICE engines, too, not to mention fuel pumps, fuel filters, vacuum lines, sensors, 12V batteries, etc.
The entire process of mining, crushing, chemically extracting, and treating the minerals for high capacity batteries might have greater carbon output than the entire lifetime of exhaust from a diesel engine for a bus.
And will be melted down and reused for the next bus, and the next bus, and the next bus. Metals are infinitely recyclable, unlike the exhaust from a diesel bus, which comes from burning matter that can only be used once.
Until the entire process, most importantly including energy and battery production, is climate neutral we are not preventing carbon release by simply using electric cars. The focus at this point in time should be on climate neutral energy production, not end point electric vehicles - we are doing things completely backwards.
The two problems are orthogonal. There's no reason to do one first and then the other. After all, even with the current energy mix, EVs are cleaner. So why not start the move to EVs now and let power production get cleaner over time on its own schedule?
I would also mention that recharging in the middle of the day is actually the worst time as that is when energy demand is at it's highest, especially in summer.
Actually, no, in many parts of California, charging in the middle of the day is the ideal time, because there's often more solar power than they can use, and they end up curtailing solar power production. But either way, a bus that travels double-digit miles per day very well might need to be charged only once per week, which could be done on weekend nights, when power use is at its lowest.
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School Bus Companies (Score:2)
It makes no real sense, except for maybe country schools that have no other option.
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A friend of mine is an accountant and did the numbers for them, but I don't live in America so maybe costs are different there. In fact I'm sure they are.
Waste (Score:2)
2500 out of 480,000 will not make a dent. Seems they could better spend that billion on manufacturing technology Research and Development. That would translate into cheaper buses which in turn would make it easier to buy electric busses and that could make a real difference.
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2500 out of 480,000 will not make a dent.
It's not intended to "make a dent". It's intended to demonstrate a use case.
Seems they could better spend that billion on manufacturing technology Research and Development. That would translate into cheaper buses which in turn would make it easier to buy electric busses and that could make a real difference.
Both.
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You don't think that a guaranteed $1B in bus sales won't spur some R&D on electric buses?
Re: Waste (Score:3)
Not if it is coming from the govt.
Holy buckets of cash batman (Score:2)
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A typical diesel school bus is at least $200k. You might get it a little lower by really scrimping on equipment, but probably not. A well-equipped ~40' model with underbelly storage, air con, a decent chair lift, and the better of the engine options (used to be an ISC or a Cat 31something, now I'm imagining ISX or ISL) can get up to $400k. It's also expected to last for at least a decade with minimal maintenance costs beyond changes of very large amounts of fluids.
The economics don't add up (Score:2)
These busses cost about $400,000.
According to https://electrek.co/2022/03/29... [electrek.co]
"a new diesel school bus, which, according to the A-Z Bus Sales representative, costs around $200,000-220,000"
According to https://thomasbuiltbuses.com/r... [thomasbuiltbuses.com].
A current diesel bus costs $63,154 in fuel costs over 15 years
So total cost for bus + diesel is 263,000 - 283,000
Even assuming the electricity is free these electric busses cost 120,000 -140,000 more than the diesel one
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Sure, if you assume that the price of diesel is never going to go up over the next 15 years.
Speaking of assumptions, I would assume that some of this money will be going towards charging infrastructure, not the buses themselves. So future electric buses will work out cheaper, because they chargers are already bought and paid for.
cart before the horse (Score:2)
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No, they don't. On the other hand, they don't have fuel pumps either. Where I live, the county has several bus yards with maintenance facilities and fuel pumps. I would expect the chargers to be installed in these locations, not at schools.
Good thing we aren't in the midst of inflation. (Score:2)
Re:Wonder what (Score:4, Funny)
electric busses?
Re:Wonder what (Score:5, Funny)
Probably electric buses.
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Listening to propaganda will do that to a person.
Re: Wonder what (Score:2)
Public employee unions are absolutely the enemy of the public.
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Re: Wonder what (Score:2)
Yeah. Everything is better in Europe. America sucks!!
Naturally.
Re: Wonder what (Score:2)
And Teachers are still not being paid enough and often have to buy their supplies for their classes with class sizes that are too large for actual learning to take place.
The problem isn't teachers or their unions obviously, it lies elsewhere.
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To be fair, much of that does not go to the teachers, it goes to all the grift in the administration which includes quite a few positions meant to look good for the federal government come handout time.
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Check your data.
educationdata.org [educationdata.org] seems to indicate that per-student spending is $13,701 in K-12 schools, averaged across the country. New York State is the highest spender, at $24,881 -- still shy of this $29000 number. Utah the lowest at under $8K per student per year.
With an "Average" [usafacts.org] public school teacher salary of ~$65K, that means that each ~4.75 students pays for a whole teacher's salary.
Further, the average class size [ed.gov] seems to be around 20 students, nationwide. So ~15 of those (or 3/4 of the spe
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Ok I agree with most of that but to be fair we ask our educators to be Psychologists, Social Workers, Babysitters and a whole lot of other things that somehow parents won't handle for themselves. Oh, and make sure that you don't give Johnny and Jane any homework because that cuts into their lives outside of class. Our education system as it is, directly reflects our society. Work on both ends at the same time and you'll start getting a better educated set of kids.
Re:Wonder what (Score:5, Insightful)
1. what absolute horseshit pointless trolling.
2. what does any of that mindless right-wing parrot clap-trap have to do with electric school buses? Bus drivers are not members of the teachers unions, and the teachers unions are not buying the buses.
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What a fool you are.
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To be fair, before the founding of the Dept of Education by that fuckwit Carter, the NEA(largest teachers union nationwide) didn't have nearly as much power or influence.
Re: Wonder what (Score:5, Insightful)
Those private and parochial schools can kick out any student for any reason. Public schools must take all students. Get back to me when private schools have to play by the same rules for that money. Guaranteed they would discover all the same problems you say are the fault of unions.
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Funding, outside of the lowest tier which almost always affects rural locations and rarely if ever urban ones, has ZERO correlation with outcomes.
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I don't think teacher's unions control school busses. Around here it's a combination of the school board and the county commission, and they hire out contractors.
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And it was a BOOK.
And two movies. The 1963 version was better, IMO.
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Because electric heat pumps that are 4x as efficient as resistive heating exist? And there's already several hundred thousand EVs equipped with them on the road?
You are a perfect example of how the education system has failed.
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Out of curiosity, how many of those vehicles open the door in the freezing cold for 1-2 minutes at a time every quarter mile or so?
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(Side note, I'd love to know why 5% of buses purchased under this plan won't be electric.)
At a guess, they are for schools which have come up with academic excuses for why they need buses that can go on longer trips than the EVs will do.