The Washoe County School District's first electric bus hit the road on Tuesday.
One bus driver for the district we spoke to, Brad Thurman, said he loves the new bus, and that it's pretty quiet. But he also compares it to a 33,000-pound golf cart
“There’s no transmission, there’s no gears, it’s very torquey but then again it’s battery powered so you have to watch a gage in there that tells us how much battery usage we're using and we want to try and monitor that and keep that in an optimal range, so we don’t run out of battery power,” Thurman said.
Thurman has been a bus driver for the district for about year since he retired, and considers it an honor to drive one of the newer buses.
He says a lot of the younger kids didn't notice change, but some of the older kids had anticipated it.
“They came out and said, ‘Hey we got the electric bus’ so some of them were excited but a lot of them didn’t even realize it,” said Thurman.
There was also a crash course of training in order to drive the new vehicle since there is no motor, but instead high powered electrical wires.
Thurman also told us the lack of emissions from the bus is noticeable.
“If you’re driving a golf cart you know there’s no motor you know there’s no stinky exhaust coming out... so some of our buses you can definitely smell them,” he said.
Marie Steele, the Vice President of Integrated Energy Services at NV Energy told us this pilot program has been a long time coming.
She says NV Energy created an incentive program helping support both the bus and the infrastructure in partnership with the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection.
They also generated funding to make sure the new electric bus was almost free for the school district.
Steele says they also looked into what the bus's batteries can do for the grid in regard to back-up power.
After the rollout of electric RTC buses, she says they were excited to advance the technology into school buses now.
"They’ve installed DC fast chargers so the buses can charge quickly. But also, just given the shorter range for our first electric school buses, you can also just charge overnight," said Steele. "But given that certainty of a new technology they’re very interested in being able to fast charge.”
Scott Lee, the Director of Transportation for the WCSD says the distance a school bus drives varies based on its route.
A short route can be 45 miles and a longer route around 100 miles a day.
A diesel bus can drive 600 miles and propane buses can drive 200 to 250 miles, while the new electric school bus can drive 100 miles per day on a single charge.
The new electric bus will service Wooster High School and Corbett Elementary School for now since those routes are relatively flat, which is perfect to test out the new bus until they add more in the future.
