NAPLES, N.Y. — The State of New York is mandating school districts transition to zero-emission school bus fleets by 2035. Starting in 2027, all new bus purchases are required to be electric but after an outcry about cost, the availability of electric to power them and battery life in more rural areas, districts can now apply for (2) two-year extensions.
News10NBC has covered the debate about electric buses extensively over the last few years. The Gates-Chili School District has 15 electric buses in its fleet but was unable to provide any data about how much it’s actually costing taxpayers to run them. Another local district now has two-years worth of data to look at when assessing the best path forward and was willing to share it.
The Naples Central School District in rural Ontario County received federal grant funding for the purchase of two electric buses and the infrastructure needed to power them. The buses have now been in use for nearly two-full school years.
“I think this past winter was really a true test for these buses because the previous winter was abnormal in terms of temperature where this was more typical. We went from seeing more minor challenges in year 1, to some challenges that were far more significant in year 2,” explains Superintendent Kevin Swartz.
Transportation Director and Head Mechanic Pat Elwell has been closely monitoring and maintaining the buses, “I’m an EV owner, my wife is an EV owner, we’ve had zero problems with our EV from the automotive industry because they are light years ahead of the curve on EV vehicles, buses are not, the technology is not there, the batteries are not there,” Elwell tells News10NBC.
The district has a total of 9 bus routes, “I ran them on every route we had just so I could get a baseline because I’m sort of data driven and I wanted to see alright, how are these really going to operate in our territory,” explains Elwell, “our routes average anywhere from 65 to 80 miles round trip and basically 8 of the 9 routes are all uphill.”
Despite the challenging terrain, “the drivers say they actually perform better than the diesel on the road, they pull the hills better, they are a much smoother ride, they say they ride like a Cadillac,” Elwell notes but the performance can be largely temperature dependent. The buses work best in temperatures between 20 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. When it’s below or above that, battery life becomes an issue.
Pat Elwell: “We were spending probably 20% of our battery on just trying to get heat on the buses to put them out on the road so, they had to midday charge in order to get enough charge to run the afternoon.”
Jennifer Lewke (News10NBC): “How often, this winter did you say, “we’re not even going to run these?”
Pat Elwell: “This winter, I would say they were probably on the road maybe 50% of the time. I was not going to put staff and children on a bus where they were seeing their breath, and the windows were all froze over to get to school.”
Jennifer Lewke: “Was it in the mornings when you see how cold it was and you couldn’t get the batteries up to 100% you’d say forget it, we’re going diesel?”
Pat Elwell: “yep.”
The district also faced significant cost differences.
Jennifer Lewke: “You said you’re data driven, what has the data showed about how much you were paying to run a diesel bus versus how much you’re paying to run an electric bus?”
Pat Elwell: “So currently, we’re paying about 36 cents per mile for a diesel bus and that holds fairly steady because we can purchase our diesel off of state contracts. The electric on the other hand is all over the place because you never know from month to month what it’s going to be so by the time you start factoring in your kilowatt hour for the supply and the delivery and all the other charges just the same as you would for your diesel bill, we’re paying $3.18 per mile for an electric bus.”
That’s 9x’s more for electric compared to diesel. Superintendent Swartz says that’s why there is no plan to purchase any further electric buses at this point.
Superintendent Kevin Swartz: “Trying to be fiscally responsible is something all superintendents across the state are really working hard to achieve, we’re trying to look out for our taxpayers and we’re trying to maintain great programming for students, I think the challenge with this is that right now the differential in costs between an EV bus and a diesel buses is $300,000 and when you start to think about even Naples, we’re a relatively small district who replaces two buses a year typically, that’s $600,000 in additional monies that the taxpayers would have to come up with and that’s exclusive of any charging or infrastructure upgrades we’d have to bring in if we went any further.”
Jennifer Lewke: “New York state has set aside hundreds of millions of dollars in available grant money to help with these fleet transitions…”
Superintendent Kevin Swartz: “I believe the state has $400-$500 million in rebate money that’s available to go toward buses. I think if you do the math with that, with a $300,000 differential those monies would probably cover the cost of 1600-2000 buses across the state. I believe there’s about 50,000 buses in New York State that would have to be brought out of service and EVs brought in so that would leave about 48,000 buses that would need to be paid for in full by community taxpayers across the state. I think what’s even more staggering is that we haven’t even talked about the infrastructure that would be necessary to bring those buses onto a campus and charge them. Again, we’re a relatively small district and I believe if we had the infrastructure here to charge all of our buses if they were electric, it would be about a million to a $1.5m in additional upgrades with infrastructure to get us the power to do that.”
Jennifer Lewke: “And had NYSEG said whether they are even capable of bringing enough power here at this point to power the buses if that were a reality?”
Superintendent Kevin Swartz: “What we know now is we have enough power I believe, to add one more charger, level 2 charger, I also know that even Ontario County had put out some communications to say that across this region there’s a significant challenge on the electric grid.”
NYSERDA was providing school districts with rebates and credits to bring the cost of the electric that powers zero emission buses down closer to the cost of powering diesel buses but Elwell and Swartz say those credits ended last year and a new tier for district pricing is being rolled out.
News10NBC Investigates: Electric vs. diesel: Naples CSD discusses financial impact of bus transition on taxpayers WHEC.com.
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