EV Buses Kick into Gear

At first glance, buses seem like a great fit for electrification. Whether they’re for schools, public transportation, or airport shuttles, buses follow a set route and schedule, unlike other fleets, such as rental cars and package delivery trucks. That predictability helps with determining battery sizes, charging locations and types, grid impact, and whether there’s a business case for adjunct systems such as battery storage and solar.

Sustainability is another obvious reason why governments, utilities, and even electrical equipment manufacturers are joining fleet owners in funding electric vehicle (EV) bus projects.

“Both local and state agencies have goals of achieving a 100% zero-emission bus fleet by 2040, and some even earlier,” says Anthony E. Mann, CEO of the E-J Group, whose recent projects include the MTA New Jamaica Electric Bus Depot in New York City, as shown in the Photo below. “We are seeing these agencies be proactive in this approach, especially with major transportation hubs, school districts, and bus companies. New York City is transitioning 5,700 buses to zero-emission electric models by 2040, and New Jersey Transit is aiming for a 100% electric bus fleet by 2032.”

Seven to 15 years might seem like a long way off until you consider some of the challenges to large-scale bus electrification, starting with transmission lines and substations.

“The demands are pretty big,” says Rajiv Singhal, who leads the zero emissions transportation team at 1898 & Co., Burns & McDonnell’s consultancy subsidiary. “Battery size averages more than 450kWh. If you have 10 buses, that's 4.5MW. That's where the challenges start.”

For electrical contractors and design firms, substations are an example of how EV bus revenue opportunities go beyond the obvious ones of designing and installing charger networks.

“When we did work for the St. Louis [Missouri] Metro, we had to build a substation for Ameren to support that power at their depot,” Singhal says.

Of course, building a substation can take years between acquiring land, zoning approval, procuring equipment, and construction. Smart charging systems can help by spreading the load around, either until the grid can be upgraded or as a long-term solution.

“Dynamic charging moves power available to the bus that needs it most to prioritize bus needs, [so the fleet is] not as big a burden on the grid,” Mann says. “Charging buses on non-peak hours [also helps] to not overburden the grid.”

Big market for big yellow buses

Grid constraints are also an example of how the road sometimes goes both ways via vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging systems.

“These allow buses to return energy to the grid during peak demand periods,” Mann says.

With some types of EV buses, the funding source requires V2G infrastructure. That gives utilities an even bigger role in those projects.

“The EPA grant for school buses really drove that market pretty fast last year,” Singhal says. “They have to be bidirectional to qualify for the grant. Some utilities are doing pilots. Baltimore Gas and Electric applied for 200 buses and got approval for 25. They want to run pilots for bidirectional. Dominion Energy in Virginia has been running a pilot for a few years for 50 school buses.”

School buses are a major opportunity simply because there are so many of them.

“There are three big names in the school bus market: Blue Bird, International, and Thomas,” Singhal says. “It’s a huge market in terms of the number of buses on the road — about half a million.”

Their usage is also conducive to electrification.

“They're definitely a good use case for electrification based on small routes,” Singhal says. “[After] morning and afternoon shifts, they can easily charge, so the batteries don't have to be large.”

But even with government and utility funding, upfront costs and the potential for surprise costs later on are two common roadblocks. Hence, the rise of as-a-service business models. For example, the Clean Bus Solutions joint venture between Blue Bird and Generate Capital uses a “fleet-as-a-service” business model: School districts and other operators pay a flat monthly fee for a turnkey package that includes buses, site assessment, charging infrastructure, telematics, demand-management software to control electric usage, and even lining up grants.

Many school districts contract out bus service rather than owning a fleet. For electrification to make business sense, those operators would need a contract long enough to amortize the upfront cost of building a depot’s worth of charging infrastructure. The local utility also would want a long-term commitment.

“The financials on that pan out only at 15-years-plus time frame,” Singhal says. “No one wants to sign a contract that long unless there is some sort of power purchase agreement for 25-plus years.”

Hydrogen emerges as an alternative to an alternative fuel

The transit market has its own set of dynamics.

“There are two major players: New Flyer and Gillig,” Singhal says. “Then Proterra came into the picture, which was only electric buses, and they filed Chapter 11. Every year in the transit market, there's demand for about 4,000 buses. New Flyer goes after the large transits, and Gillig goes after the smaller transits. That's the market division. They sell about 2,000 buses each [across] diesel, CNG, whatever.”

Some transit projects are large, such as Montgomery County, Maryland’s David F. Bone Equipment Maintenance and Transit Operations Center, which aims to be the country’s largest renewable energy-powered transit depot and the largest transit depot microgrid, with:

• 4.84MWDC of rooftop and canopy solar
• 2 MW/6.88MWh battery storage
• Up to 2.25MW of charging capacity
• Up to 2MW of V2G power going back

The Bone facility broke ground in 2024 and is the county’s second microgrid after the Brookville Smart Energy Bus Depot that opened in 2022. Both facilities are backed by AlphaStruxure, a joint venture between the investment firm Carlyle and Schneider Electric, as well as Pepco, the local utility. Bone is also an example of how “electric” doesn’t necessarily mean batteries. Most of its anticipated 200 electric buses will be powered by hydrogen fuel cells because “they have a greater range versus battery electric buses and can thus support longer bus routes,” the county says.

“We are seeing some emergence of hydrogen fuel cell buses,” says E-J’s Mann. “This will lead to the need for hydrogen changing stations at these bus depots.”

Cutting the cord

Airport shuttle fleets currently are the smallest market opportunity.

“Generally, airports don't own their shuttles,” Singhal says. “Mostly, they are third-party contractors. I'm not seeing a lot of action at airports right now on the terminal side.”

One notable exception is Kansas City International Airport, which is also the first in the country to have wireless induction charging for its fleet that shuttles passengers between the terminal and long-term parking.

“Our customers love them,” says Joe McBride, communications manager. “They're quiet. They're cleaner. It's a swell passenger experience.”

Kansas City’s buses use conventional plug-in chargers at the depot, including when drivers go on breaks and lunch. But the rest of the time, they charge at each terminal stop via a plate built into the roadbed.

“The vehicle rolls over the pad, aligns, and we're passing power in less than 2 seconds,” says Jeremy Siegel, strategy and energy director at InductEV, which provided Kansas City’s charging infrastructure and upgraded the airport’s fleet to support induction. “The driver does not have to leave the vehicle to do anything.”

That hands-free design highlights one of induction’s benefits — no cable to remember to plug in or disconnect before driving off.

“There’s also a maintenance component to it: nothing to break, nothing to hit, nothing to necessarily wear out,” Siegel says. “Maintenance is essentially a visual inspection of the pads on the vehicles every six months, servicing the cabinet fan, which is the only moving part, and adding coolant to the system.”

Roadbed chargers also could help projects get approved faster compared to the pantograph systems that some fleets use.

“It’s much more straightforward and less obtrusive when you’re trying to get approvals from planning boards or architectural review committees,” says Greg Brenner, managing director at WB Engineers+Consultants, which has been the engineer of record on several InductEV installations.

Another major benefit is that induction spreads the charging load around both geographically and by time of day. This approach can help with electrification because a project’s cost and timeline no longer hinge on the grid capacity available at an airport’s depot.

“As opposed to charging, say, 50 buses in a depot with 50 chargers overnight, think about charging those 50 buses with five chargers scattered along their routes,” Siegel says. “They essentially charge in ‘sips’ at the normal stops, turn arounds, things like that. With 5 to 7 minutes an hour, you can generally maintain a state of charge on the vehicle throughout the day.”

This also affects battery longevity and size.

“You're operating in a fairly small state of charge — say 40% to 70% — and not deep cycling, so the batteries last a lot longer, often beyond the life of the vehicle,” Siegel says. “Battery replacement is a major capital expenditure. You can also potentially do smaller batteries since you're charging along the route and don't need a vehicle to do the absolute [maximum] range over the course of the day.”

Another way that frequent access to charging saves capex is by reducing fleet size. Those savings could help some projects get the green light.

“When you have a single vehicle that can maintain a continuous loop without stopping to recharge or going offline while they swap out another vehicle, it's a big game changer,” Brenner says.

InductEV also serves the transit market. Whether it’s airport shuttles or public transportation, one key design consideration is the number of induction charging pads around a route and the typical dwell time at each. That’s one lesson learned in Kansas City, which implemented induction charging at a brand-new terminal that has a significantly different route and schedule than the three terminals it replaced.

“We haven't really utilized it to the potential that we thought,” says Aaron Kaden, the aviation department’s fleet asset superintendent. “Unfortunately, the dwell time for the bus to sit at the new terminal is not like it was at the old terminals. We were going to try to use it so that we maintained a 65% to 85% state of charge. But with the buses only sitting there for maybe a minute, we're not even getting a 1% state of charge [increase].”

Navigating labor shortages and bankruptcies

Regardless of the power source and how it gets to the bus, another electrification challenge for fleet owners is finding enough qualified people to maintain everything.

“The number of parts are less when you compare a diesel bus to an electric bus, but it's high voltage,” says 1898’s Singhal. “So instead of a mechanic, you need more of an electrician.”

Some automotive trade schools have launched EV programs, but it’s going to take time to meet demand. Bus owners are also competing with other types of fleets, such as rental vehicles, local delivery, and long-distance trucks as well as dealerships that need to service the passenger vehicles they sell and lease.

“I don't know how more involved we're going to get with EVs at this point, just because we are struggling to get training for the technicians to fix the buses,” Kaden says. “I think there needs to be more companies that offer training for technicians on EVs. Once that happens, it's going to make it a lot easier for entities to repair their own stuff.”

It’s a stretch to see electrical contractors expanding into maintenance to fill that gap and turn it into an additional revenue stream. But there could be systems integration opportunities for clients with multiple suppliers of charging infrastructure, buses, and other systems. For fleet owners, a multi-vendor environment might seem like a smart move in light of bankruptcies such as Proterra and Lion Electric.

“If I’m a large transit, I don't want to get locked into one vendor,” Singhal says. “Lots of interoperability questions come into play.”