Electric school buses provide a unique set of benefits to your district, from cleaner, healthier air for your students and communities to the environment by decreasing your carbon footprint and providing zero emissions at the vehicle level.
Protect the Environment
Incorporating electric buses provides cleaner transportation and benefits your community, and the world, by decreasing your carbon footprint. Adding electric vehicles to your fleet creates a better environment, and removes potential health and learning threats for your students on and around the bus.
Beyond just air pollution, electric vehicles reduce noise pollution. On average, a school bus produces noise levels of 85 decibels and the EPA recommends avoiding anything higher than 80 decibels.
Your district can leverage First Student’s scale to bring down the price of electric school buses. By bringing down the upfront price you can electrify larger portions of your fleet and have an even bigger impact on our global environment, on our community and on our students.
Care for Your Community
Electric school buses demonstrate the value your district places on your community and beyond just showing progress, they can be a rallying point for your community. Whenever we introduce electric school buses there is a lot of fan fair and community celebration. That celebration can continue in perpetuity as residents see your clean and quiet buses in their communities.
Electrifying your fleet also shows your district’s leadership and commitment to progress on important environmental issues and creates good will towards the school district. First Student stands ready to partner with you to electrify a couple of buses or to electrify large portions of your fleet. We have experience with the whole process including reporting of results to demonstrate the impact electric school buses are having on your community.
Lower Your Costs
Adding electric school buses to your fleet will insure you are good stewards of your budget as electric school buses drive cost savings because electricity is cheaper than diesel and lower maintenance costs because electric engines requires less maintenance. In some cases, electric school buses can even generate revenue through V2G (Vehicle to Grid) by selling excess electricity back to the grid during times of high demand.
Your district can leverage First Student’s scale to bring down the price of electric school buses. By bringing down the upfront price you can electrify larger portions of your fleet and have an even bigger impact on our global environment, on our community and on our students.
Meet Future Requirements
Many states have regulations to electrify by a certain date. Beginning electrification now will help you start down the inevitable path and ensure you are not committing to or buying buses that will be obsolete before they can be fully depreciated.
Early adopters of electric school bus technology can take advantage of all the funding and incentives that are in place to subsidize to the upfront cost of electric school buses. First Student has experience identifying and securing funding and stands ready to help your district take advantage of all available funds.
Funding sources First Student has experience with, and can help you take advantage of include:
- Volkswagen ZEV Investment Plan
- Municipal bonds
- Utility company partnerships and incentives
- Federal grant programs like the School Bus Rebate Program
- Regional, state & local grant and incentive programs
To learn more about how First Student can help your district begin the electrification process, email us at electrification@firststudentinc.com.