Report: U.S. Electric School Bus Deployment Over 1,700 and Climbing

A new report issued by CALSTART indicates that, as of September 2021, 1,738 electric school buses have been funded, ordered, delivered, and deployed across the United States.

The report by the national nonprofit consortium, Zeroing in on ESBs, provides an inventory of these zero-emission buses as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act stands ready to allocate up to $5 billion over the next five years to fund more of the vehicles in school districts across the country.

“The timing is right because the coming funding is aligned with industry readiness – every major manufacturer offers an ESB model available in the U.S.,” said Jared Schnader, director of bus programs at CALSTART. “The next step is for school districts to get prepared for the transition.”

CALSTART launched an ongoing Electric School Bus Working Group to share up-to-date information and peer learnings and interaction opportunities across school districts nationwide.

Another CALSTART publication found that clean fuels power only 8% of the current U.S. school bus fleet, and only 1% is electric.

Two major points from Zeroing in on ESBs:

• California, Maryland, and Florida lead the country in electric school bus deployment.
• School districts are exploring alternative deployment models, such as turnkey and Transportation-as-a-Service (TaaS) to ease the high upfront cost of ESB adoption.

CALSTART stated in the report that it “is the first of its kind to track the deployment of electric school buses (ESBs) within the United States on a state-by-state basis.” The consortium plans to publish the report annually to track market growth.

“As government at the federal and state levels become more focused on meeting emissions reduction goals, the adoption of electric vehicles such as school buses will be important to address,” the report stated.