Medium-duty vehicle producer Phoenix Motor Inc. has been awarded a two-year contract by the California Department of General Services to supply school districts with the company’s Z600 electric Type A school bus with cutaway chassis.

The contract, which has an option to extend for a third year, gives districts the ability to quickly purchase zero-emission buses at a competitive price without requiring a bid process.

“Phoenix is excited about its positive momentum in the electric school bus market,” said Denton Peng, CEO of Phoenix Motorcars. “This contract award will allow California schools to purchase our Type A with a cutaway chassis school buses easily and start cleaning the air quality for their students and communities.”

Phoenix’s Z600 school bus is offered with both 90kWh as well as 141kWh battery pack options and can be purchased with or without an ADA-compliant wheelchair lift. 

“Phoenix is thrilled with this contract award in our home state of California,” said Thomas Allen, vice president of sales, and marketing. “With this contract, we can help schools of all sizes start electrifying their fleets and bring clean school buses into their districts while avoiding the cumbersome process of bidding for each procurement. This is a major step forward for California school districts and a testament to California’s commitment to lowering emissions statewide, especially for the sake of healthy children, students, faculty, and the surrounding communities of our education system.”

This contract comes at an opportune time for zero-emission school bus funding, with the California HVIP Program still open and currently offering a standard incentive voucher for $99,000 for the Phoenix Z600, and up to $310,000 for eligible districts with the HVIP school bus set aside.

Another available funding source is the EPA’s Clean School Bus Rebate Program, which currently offers $145,000 to $265,000 per Type A school bus.

Both programs were incorporated into the structure of the California DGS contract, and Phoenix Motorcars is eligible and qualified to work with both HVIP and EPA programs.