Three years ago, Vice President Kamala Harris was tasked with overseeing the US government's billion-dollar investment to order thousands of electric buses across hundreds of American school districts. A new analysis has shown that after spending billions of dollars, only 60 school buses have been delivered while many school districts have withdrawn from the program.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, Harris and EPA administrator Michael Regan, through the Clean School Bus program, used almost $1 billion in federal rebates for 389 school districts across all 50 states to help deliver 2,463 electric school buses.
However, according to an analysis of federal data by the outlet, a mere 27 of those districts have proven to the EPA that their buses were delivered and that their diesel-fueled buses were taken out of service. Those districts have only deployed a total of 60 battery-electric or low-emissions propane-fueled school buses. 55 other districts quit the program due to a variety of issues.
The Clean School Bus program was created as part of Biden’s 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which set aside $5 billion in rebates and grants for the EPA to distribute. During a trip to Seattle in 2022 when Harris announced the initiative to electrify the nation’s school buses, in nearby Kent, WA, all 3 of the district’s electric school buses were out of service.
At the time, a source told The Post Millennial that the district “bought 3 electric school buses with the grants that were given out a couple of years ago. All 3 of those buses are out of service today because they cannot get parts for them. They also cannot be serviced by our district mechanics.”
Since Harris's initial announcement of the $1 billion worth of grants for 280 districts and a second round of $900 million in rebates for an additional 530 districts, none of those districts have deployed any buses under the program. Harris took point on the failed program, which she said earlier this year was an "investment in our children, their health, and their education."
A new school bus under the Clean School Bus program can cost more than $370,000, three times the cost of a diesel bus, making the vehicles prohibitively expensive even with the rebates and grants. Additionally, the new buses have operating issues in the winter.
The EPA claimed in an annual report that the majority of the withdrawals are due to "challenges coordinating with electric utilities, sometimes lengthy and costly electric infrastructure upgrades required to install [electric vehicle supply equipment], or concerns around the maintenance and range of electric buses."
Cold weather, technology concerns, and increased infrastructure costs were also cited as reasons districts withdrew from the program.
In Aug. 2023, Proterra Inc., an electric vehicle company repeatedly praised by the Biden administration as the United States' key to dominating the field on a global scale, filed for bankruptcy citing, "market and macro-economic headwinds."
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