Oh, it’s been a while, but I do have a couple of electrified goodies to pass along, thanks to dear David and my buddy GlobalTravlr.
And, of course, there’s a rabbithole.
The first thing was an interesting Xweet David sent me, which, for the first time, had a municipality that had actually done the #mathz on what their new fangled, save-the-Earth electric buses were costing them to run. Free and clear of all government largesse, and compared to their old, reliable but not as sexy diesel buses.
Like, holy CRAP. To no one but a rainbow-painted unicorn’s surprise, these mofos are expensive as all get-out to have on the road.
This is with the Naples (NY) School District running only two electric school buses, both of which had initially paid for by federal grants, etc.
The Naples School District has 2 electric buses. They’ve crunched the numbers and right now, they’re paying about 36 cents per mile for diesel and $3.18 per mile for electric. Here’s part of my conversation with the transportation director. Full story tonight on @news10nbc pic.twitter.com/fUMGKcAo9l
— Jennifer Lewke (@WHEC_JLewke) March 12, 2026
36 cents per mile for diesel and $3.18 per mile for electric
With this past winter being the first ‘real’ winter the buses had faced, it turned out there were, as the school superintendent said, some ‘far more significant challenges.
Do. Tell.
…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.
They ‘pull them hills’ like bad dogs, but it is tough when the windows frost over and the children turn blue, which turned out to be half of this past winter.
…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.”
All this inconvenience and pain for a mere nine times the cost of diesel! What a bargain for Gaia!
Guess who’s not buying any more electric school buses for the Naples district?
That’d be dis guy. And he doesn’t care how much money the state of New York throws at him, God bless him.
…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.”
Someone tried to say that the folks in Naples, NY, obviously were not ‘using’ their electric buses ‘correctly,’ and offered up the school district in a NY community known as Gates for proof that they were affordable and efficient.
Oddly enough, I got none of that from this interview.
Electric buses in Gates-Chili: How they perform in the cold and what it means for taxpayers
As New York state pushes school districts to transition to electric buses, the Gates-Chili Central School District already has 15 in its fleet and the district says despite the recent bitter cold, they are performing effectively.
…The district has leveraged state grants to expand its electric fleet, with 20% of its buses now running on electricity. “They work for our district very well, we don’t really have major concerns at this point,” says Matt Helmbold, the Director of Transportation for Gates-Chili. The district is densely populated, most of the routes are right around 30 miles. The district continues to use diesel buses for out of district transportation, field trips and sporting events.
Helmbold says they’ve learned over the last few winters some tricks to optimizing the battery life on the electric fleet, “we have the program set to charge the buses to 90% and then they shut off, at about 3 in the morning, the computer turns them on to finish the last 10% and by doing that, the batteries are warm and ready to go when they leave and the drivers are able to have heat and everything they need to pick up kids safely,” he explains.
And here’s where the tricksy language on ‘the cost’ comes in. Because, you see, Gates-Chilli hasn’t actually done a brass-tacks cost analysis. They simply totted up what grants and handouts they’ve gotten and said, ‘Hasn’t cost us anything yet!’ And the reporter waits until the very last word to drop the ‘haven’t actually done the math’ quote.
…The other big question of course, is cost. Electric buses are double the price of diesel buses but what about the energy that fuels them?
Jennifer Lewke: “Is there now a way to determine how much I’m paying as a taxpayer here to power these buses compared to diesel?”
Matt Helmbod: “We track diesel and electric, that’s something that we do, we track how much it costs per mile, we monitor that, we track how much the bus costs, compare that. So, yea, we are always monitoring that.”
Jennifer Lewke: “…and how does it compare?”
Matt Helmbod: “Um, so right now NYSERDA and RG&E have been working very well with us, they’re working to make sure that we get grants and rebates to make sure that all the bill do compare to the same as diesel and October was their deadline for their new plan and they’re working to implement that for us as well.”
Jennifer Lewke: “So, when you say new plan, does that just mean what the best time to charge is for rates? Or what does that mean?”
Matt Helmbod: “It’s where to put us, we’re not an industrial plant so, where to put us on a rate is really what it was.”
Helmbod was not able to provide the actual rates or data that shows the comparison but says that state grants have off-set the cost of the electricity.
What crock of Green grifting poo. The school district is clueless.
Another school district has had a whale of a time as well.
OUR CONFIDENCE IS WANING IN THESE PARTICULAR BUSES
A school district in Democrat Maine got new EV busses through The EPA’s ‘Clean school bus program’
Winter came and the busses shut down during a run, they were unable to be driven back to the school and abandoned on the side of the road
“They sent the buses back to the… pic.twitter.com/IIiXWHU7Qc
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) February 15, 2025
‘Nothing but trouble.‘ In Maine.
The bumpy road for electric school buses continues for two Maine school districts.
Winthrop and Yarmouth are keeping those buses off the road this school year. The Quebec-based manufacturer, Lion Electric, has filed for bankruptcy.
Winthrop has four electric buses. Superintendent Becky Foley says the buses have been nothing but trouble.
In its first year, one bus lost its brakes and ran into a snowbank. Nobody was hurt, but the buses have also spent months in repair shops, faced parts recalls and failed state inspections.
…“We just want to hear from the EPA and learn how we can dispose of them, get rid of them and move on,” Foley said.
Which brings me to the ‘Stache video GT sent along.
What would happen if tiny, earnest little Naples, NY, dumped more good money after bad and then lost half its electric fleet overnight?
It happens. Half of the electric school bus fleet in Williston, Vermont, went up in flames four nights ago.
Lucky thing the buses, all leased, were parked outside. A mechanical failure of some sort in one bus is being blamed as opposed to a battery fire.
…Late Thursday, the Williston Fire Department said the fire started because of a mechanical failure in one of the buses before quickly spreading to the other three buses nearby.
Fire crews said they were able to put out the flames in about five minutes, preventing the fire from spreading to nearby vehicles or buildings.
By Thursday morning, the scene showed the extent of the damage: the buses were completely destroyed, with broken parts, melted lights, twisted metal, and even the charging stations covered in smoke.
The Champlain Valley School District operates a fleet of about 60 buses, and all its electric buses are leased.
As it was, these buses, which had only been running since September, much like the Naples experience, have not proven to be very popular or efficient in a New England town in the midst of what proved to be a very New Englandish winter.
Go figure.
…The fire started around 10:30 p.m. Authorities said the cause was not battery-related. Four buses burned, and two were spared. Nobody was injured, but fire officials say the damage to the buses and their chargers likely totals more than $2 million.
The buses had only been running since September. Despite having 60 buses running in the district, Bunting and Chief Operating Officer Gary Marckres said the loss will require adjustments. “It will make us be creative a little bit. So, we may have to modify some routes and employ some spares,” Marckres said.
…The buses have faced criticism in the past for cold-weather battery issues. “It was challenging, in some ways, in the extreme cold. It is the first year. The company, –Highland Electric — that we lease them from, they were super proactive with us to troubleshoot,” Marckres said.
The district will not use the two unharmed electric buses until investigators determine exactly what happened and provide assurance that it will not happen again.
And the district is scrambling to have enough coverage for bus routes. How many times have I posted about school districts that have gone heavy on the electrics, scrambling because of either fires or repeated mechanical issues that sideline parts or the whole of their fleet, and now do not have enough buses?
Wild, huh?
Speaking of sidelined electric fleets, this is where the rabbithole came in. While I was looking for more on the Williston fire, I came across this video on the Broward County Transit electric bus fleet and was like, WHUT.
Broward County Transit purchased 42 electric buses from a California based manufacturer for $54 million
The electric busses don’t work, broke down every 600 miles and the company went bankrupt
Now these $54 million dollar busses paid for by your taxes just sit here abandoned pic.twitter.com/7ZvNAaETFN
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) March 4, 2026
This is from a year ago. Nothing has changed.
Miami-Dade and Broward spent $126 million to purchase 117 electric buses and build charging stations for the new clean, green fleet. It was a forward-thinking solution intended to save South Florida money and cut back on fossil fuel buses that spew pollution and contribute to climate change and health problems.
Today, few of the EV buses remain on the road.
Most broke down in under a year, pulled from routes while awaiting a backlog of maintenance work. Adding to repair headaches, Proterra — the California-based company that manufactured the buses — has since filed for bankruptcy, leaving the counties with a parts shortage and a bunch of vehicles they’ve been unable to fix.
How badly have the EV fleets short-circuited? In Miami-Dade, depending on the day, only five to seven of the county’s 75 EV buses are in service. In Broward, none of Broward’s fleet of 42 EVs buses managed to run routes earlier this month.
I was completely unaware of this. You know what else I hadn’t heard about?
Austin, Texas, blowing $255M on 46 electric buses in 2024 that they almost immediately had to mothball.
It’s been a bumpy road for CapMetro to transition its bus fleet from gas to all-electric.
Now, the agency is putting 46 of its new electric buses in storage for the next year after a manufacturer filed for bankruptcy protection.
Currently, 104 buses in CapMetro’s fleet are electric, making a quarter of their buses battery-electric technology. At $1 million a piece, 58 were manufactured by Canadian-based New Flyer, and 46 were manufactured by Proterra, which declared bankruptcy in 2023.
In January, Proterra was acquired by California-based Phoenix Motor Inc.
And again, it wasn’t simply a matter of bankruptcy and hard-to-get parts. The buses had a helluva time with Austin’s ups and downs, especially in the heat.
…Diesel buses can run from early in the morning until past midnight. A battery bus only runs about 8 to 10 hours before it needs to be recharged, creating tough logistical hurdles in scheduling routes.
An analysis by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) — a state-funded research agency at Texas A&M University — found battery-electric buses could only cover 36% of Capital Metro’s bus schedules.
“If [the route] is too long, it won’t make it,” said John Overman, a research scientist with TTI. “You’re going to have to charge them mid-route or wherever it is.” Austin’s hills drain batteries faster. So does trying to cool buses in the city’s oppressive heat.
…Mechanical problems, coupled with challenges in procuring parts and doing repairs, mean battery-electric buses are often unavailable for service. In 2022, almost 52% of e-buses were down, on average. In 2023, the number of vehicles out for repair improved slightly to an average of just under 50%.
“Getting the expertise up and being able to have those vehicles be as reliable as our old workhorse diesel buses have been is a challenge,” Watkins said. “It’s something that we are up to.”
…Capital Metro admitted at the time of the bankruptcy proceedings that the shift to an all-electric fleet was hitting speed bumps.
“The reliability of electric buses no matter the manufacturer is less than a diesel bus. I’m not going to tell you they operate as well as diesel bus,” CapMetro chief operating officer Andy Skabowski told KUT last December. “We’re going to see some vehicles that are down a little bit longer than a diesel bus.”
Imagine that – hot in Austin. Whoda thunk?
They’re buying ‘hybrids’ now while still paying for bus storage.
And the Grift goes on.
Michigan is giving $44 million to low income schools to buy busses
They’re buying 99 of electric and 10 are propane-powered
The busses are so expensive if they didn’t buy electric, they could buy 200 gas powered buses instead of 109
“Electric buses have range problems. They,… pic.twitter.com/uoUpLYd2kv
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) March 6, 2026
…The busses are so expensive if they didn’t buy electric, they could buy 200 gas powered buses instead of 109
“Electric buses have range problems. They, and particularly in the winter, because they have to turn the heaters on, which are also electric-powered. So you have to make a decision, do we freeze the kids below 20 degrees Fahrenheit, or do we get them to where they’re going before the range runs out? So that’s one of the problems.
The other problem is there’s only about five con companies in the nation that make these. One of them’s gone bankrupt. They had a 40% share. There’s no spare parts that they’re going out out of business. Another company is having financial difficulties. There’s only about a thousand buses a year produced. It’s not a big market, and it’s only there because of government support.”
There is a litany available of hundreds of millions of wasted dollars spent by cities like Austin, the fruits of which are now gathering dust in warehouses and barns, and what probably should be open fields like Broward, which has never been added up before.
Add the school bus failures, like the folks up there in Winthrop, Maine. Those folks are just waiting for the five years they are required to keep the buses to be over so the EPA can tell the school district where they can dump them.
My goodness.
All those monster batteries, not to mention the ghastly process that went into mining and manufacturing the components, and now? How do these cities dispose of these worthless but sickeningly toxic and expensive Green elephants?
The climate cultists never ever have an answer for what happens after.
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