DENVER — Denver Public Schools (DPS) added 25 electric buses to its fleet ahead of the upcoming school year.
“This electrifies 12% of our yellow bus fleet. We'll now have 28 electric school busses on the road. Automobiles and vehicles are responsible for 14% of our overall emissions here in DPS, so this makes a significant dent,” said Denver Public Schools Director of Sustainability Tom Wildman.
Each electric bus cost $400,000 each, totaling $10 million. Grants and rebates covered the cost of those new EV buses as well as the $11 million charging infrastructure. On the other hand, its diesel buses cost only $140,000.
▶️ Denver7 reporter Sophia Villalba breaks down the potential savings, in the video player below.
The EV buses will still have the same control for its drivers as the diesel buses. While the EV buses look the same as diesel buses there is new technology that has been added.
“There's 360-degree cameras, radar, they have drop chains, and there’s no noise,” DPS executive director of transportation Albert Samora said.
Some of the biggest savings comes from operating the electric vehicles.
“Whatever is not spent in transportation goes back to education, and our goal here is to educate kids. That's probably the biggest difference on these buses,” Samora said.
DPS estimates electricity will cost $1,900 a year per EV bus versus $6,800 in diesel, saving them around $123,000 a year on fuel. They also expect about 75% less maintenance when it comes to their EV buses.
“There's an electric motor. It does have some of the same parts as a regular bus, but for the majority of it, its 75 percent reduced in the amount of maintenance because it doesn't have an engine transmission and all those heavy parts,” Samora added.
That’s where the question of long-term cost comes in.
The district said while potential savings are significant, they also acknowledge they don’t yet have the data to know the lifetime cost of an electric bus compared with a diesel bus.
The EV batteries alone cost $93,000 each and have an eight-year warranty.
DPS also said major repairs are expected around years nine or ten, about the same time they expect major repairs on their diesel-run buses.
In the meantime, the district says its new monitoring system will track electricity use, maintenance, and efficiency to give them a better picture of those costs.
“We can actually control the amount of charge that goes to every one of these busses. If a bus has a heavier route than other busses, we can give more charge to that bus, so it's just a little more management,” Samora added.
DPS has a goal to reduce their carbon footprint by 90% by 2050 and switching to electric buses is one way to get there.
“Part of the reason why we're committed to electric buses is because students at Denver Public Schools put a resolution in place,” district officials told Denver7.
DPS is still heavily reliant on diesel. Of its 297 buses about 100 buses run on diesel and the district logs about 12,000 miles every day.
The district said diesel is still expensive costing them around $4.20 a gallon as of last week. DPS buys diesel in bulk, which keeps the price lower than others would pay at a gas station.
The price would have to top $5 a gallon before the district would consider any budget changes that could impact student pickup boundaries.
Any change would have to go through the Board of Education and wouldn’t be implemented until the following year. As of now, DPS said they're nowhere near that threshold.
