Blue Bird (Nasdaq: BLBD) has achieved a major milestone by delivering its 2,000th electric school bus to the Clark County School District (CCSD) in Nevada.

CCSD gets first electric school bus

CCSD is the fifth largest school district in the United States. It has 373 schools with over 300,000 students. The district has a bus fleet of over 1,900 vehicles and transports over 123,000 students each school day on over 1,400 bus routes.

The school district took delivery of Blue Bird’s All-American RE model, which features a 155 kWh Li-ION NMC/G-cell battery, a range of 120 miles and can carry 84 students. It is powered by Accelera by Cummins’ PowerDrive 7000 electric system. The bus can be charged overnight, with a full charge taking three to eight hours.

A second electric bus, purchased with a grant from the Clark County Division of Air Quality, is currently undergoing inspection and is expected to be on the road in early 2025. CCSD also received a $9.875 million grant through the EPA’s Clean School Bus Program to purchase electric school buses. With a portion of the grant money, the company is currently purchasing an additional 25 electric school buses and electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

This clean school bus program is part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that provides a total of $5 billion over five years for electric school bus transportation in the US.

Britton Smith, president of Blue Bird Corporation, said, “Local, state and federal funding for clean school buses remains at an all-time high. Above all, we applaud the EPA’s Clean School Bus Program for accelerating the adoption of zero-emission student transportation across the country and helping usher in an unprecedented era of technological innovation.”

CCSD’s landmark unit is now one of more than 2,000 Blue Bird electric school buses serving school districts in 41 U.S. states and four Canadian provinces. By replacing 2,000 diesel-powered school buses with 2,000 electric buses, carbon emissions will be reduced by more than 21,000 metric tons per year. That means nearly 150,000 students a day will no longer be exposed to diesel exhaust linked to health conditions like asthma and heart disease.

In 2023, Blue Bird opened a 40,000-square-foot EV manufacturing center in Fort Valley, Georgia, and it continues to expand production. The U.S. Department of Energy recently selected Blue Bird to receive an $80 million grant to convert a former diesel motorhome manufacturing facility into a 600,00-square-foot EV manufacturing facility, allowing the company to increase its long-term production capacity to more than 5,000 electric school buses per year.

Electrek’s Opinion

This is a really cool milestone. But then you consider that Clark County alone has 1,900 school buses and it, and the entire country, has a long way to go to get kids off diesel school buses. So Blue Bird’s expanded manufacturing capacity can’t come online fast enough and hopefully Clark County will spend that nearly $10 million to quickly roll out its bus program.

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