Blue Bird Corp., a provider of electric and low-emission school buses, is supplying 23 electric school buses to Carter County Schools (CCS) in Kentucky, which operates 11 schools serving approximately 4,200 students.
The new Vision electric school buses Blue Bird is providing to CCS feature an extended range, faster battery charging and increased seating capacity.
Blue Bird’s most advanced Vision electric school bus carries a higher-capacity battery of 196 kWh, a more than 25% capacity increase compared with the previous model bus. The battery enables a vehicle range of up to 130 miles on a single charge. The high-performance battery takes three hours to fully recharge since it supports a fast-charging rate of 80 kW.
The compact and lightweight batteries contribute to improved efficiency and a vehicle weight reduction of about 1,000 lbs. In turn, Blue Bird increased the seating capacity of its new Vision electric bus to 77 passengers, up from 72.
After completion of the latest Blue Bird bus delivery, CCS will maintain a bus fleet of nearly 75 vehicles. CCS school buses travel more than 3,600 miles each school day, as they pick up and safely transport up to 3,000 students to and from schools.
“We are thrilled to deploy our very first electric school buses to lower the emissions of our school bus fleet,” says Dr. Paul Green, superintendent of CCS. “Clean student transportation is one of our top priorities. Blue Bird’s most advanced, zero-emission school buses will help us to create a healthier environment for our students and our communities at large.”
“We are pleased that Carter County Schools places its trust in Blue Bird to help the school district transition to clean student transportation,” says Britton Smith, president of Blue Bird. “Over the past century, Blue Bird has emerged as an iconic company well-recognized for its best-in-class technology and innovation. Today, school districts and students alike benefit from Blue Bird’s unrivalled leadership in low- and zero-emission vehicles. Electric school buses mean cleaner air to breathe.”
CCS received a $9,085,000 grant through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 2022 Clean School Bus Rebate Program to purchase its Blue Bird electric school bus fleet. This program is part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) which provides a total of $5 billion over five years for clean school bus transportation nationwide. In 2023, the EPA awarded nearly $1 billion in funding to school districts across all 50 U.S. states for more than 2,400 clean school buses. In 2024, the EPA plans to offer an additional $1 billion in funding for low- and zero-emission school buses.