Over 20 years ago, General Motors introduced the EV1. This all-electric car quickly won passionate enthusiasm from its drivers and seemed like a wedge into creating a clean electric vehicle future. Just a few years in, GM killed the program (literally crushing the vehicles) and the EV1 disappeared from the streets.
As explored in Who Killed The Electric Car?, a complex set of players, motivations, and actions undermined EV1 deployment and viability of success which combined to ‘kill the electric car’.
Electric Vehicles are deploying, around the world, in increasing numbers and the ‘case’ for them mounts with every passing moment. Even with this, real challenges to EV deployment continue from fossil-foolish efforts to squash electric vehicles, misguided commentators with a poor understanding of EV Benefits, to buyers finding it hard to buy an EV as dealers don’t stock them, salesmen don’t understand them, and so on. Thus, the saga of “Who Killed The Electric Car” still has relevancy.
Buses are an electric vehicle arena seeing electrifying growth. And, now, electric school bus (ESB) deployment seems on the cusp of moving from one-off, small-scale demonstrations to mass deployment.
Even so, key ESB players seem — perhaps inadvertently — involved in the same sort of actions that helped ‘kill the electric car’. Thomas Built Buses (a Daimler subsidiary using Proterra technology) is the provider for Dominion Power’s Virginia ESB demonstration program, with 50 ESBs already ordered and potentially well over 10,000 to follow in the coming decade.
A key reason for large vehicle (especially school bus) electrification is the displacement of diesel fuels (with a multitude of value streams deriving from reduced diesel usage ranging from reduced costs and pollution to improved student health and educational performance). The benefits are quite clear:
With ESBs on the cusp of real momentum, a reasonable expectation would be that key industry players supportive of ESB deployment would highlight the benefits of moving off diesel fuels and that only those against ESB deployment would be dismissing the implications of burning diesel fuels. Yet, consider what greets visitors to ThomasBuiltBuses.com:
To make clear, the following video is not about “corrected … myths” but about providing misdirection about the risks of diesel fuels to undermine efforts to electrify school bus fleets.
One has to ask whether Thomas Built Buses is serious about electric school bus electrification or, in fact, is intent on being featured in a future documentary about “Who Killed The Electric School Bus?”
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