Electric school buses are rolling out across the United States as school districts look to keep their students and the communities they work in safe and free of harmful emissions. In a significant milestone, Thomas Built Buses announced Wednesday that it has delivered 200 Proterra-powered electric school buses, with the latest going to Monroe County, Indiana.
What makes Proterra-powered electric school buses special
Thomas Built Buses, a leading school bus manufacturer with over 100 years of experience, teamed up with Proterra, a commercial EV tech manufacturer, to introduce the next generation of electric school buses.
Each Saf-T-Liner C2 Jouley electric school bus comes equipped with 226 kWh of energy through a Proterra-powered battery system and drivetrain. The Proterra H Series battery pack is designed for commercial use with a liquid cooling system and enhanced software to ensure maximum charging and performance efficiency.
The Proterra-powered electric buses can seat up to 81 while delivering up to 138 miles in range. With over-the-air software updates and vehicle-to-grid charging capabilities, these EV buses are lightyears ahead of the traditional yellow buses we are used to.
For example, in August, Electrek reported two Jouley electric buses gave seven MWh back to the grid. Combined with the three MWh previously generated, it was enough to power around 600 homes for a day.
More recently, in September, Thomas Built Saf-T-Liner electric buses crossed 500,000 miles driven in Virginia, avoiding 447.7 short tons of greenhouse gases, according to the AFLEET tool.
Today, Thomas Built Buses achieved another major milestone by delivering its 200th Jouley electric school bus loaded with Proterra technology. Indiana’s Monroe County Public School District is celebrating as it helped play a role in getting there.
Indiana welcomes new zero-emission EV buses
The first county in Indiana state to receive a Jouley electric bus in the fall of 2022, Monroe County helped Thomas Built Buses achieve the 200-bus milestone as it received its sixth delivery of 13 zero-emission buses.
The superintendent for Monroe County Community School Corp., Dr. Jeff Hauswald, explains the benefits of school districts going electric, stating:
Beyond the long-term cost savings benefits, converting our fleet also helps us meet safety and sustainability goals set forth by school administration, reducing CO2 emissions by 27 tons and saving 1,080 gallons of diesel per bus in our fleet. With every additional bus we convert, we’re only adding to those numbers.
The school district has committed to going all-electric by 2028, including around 85 primary bus routes.
Meanwhile, Chris Baily, president of Proterra Powered & Energy, congratulated Monroe County while speaking about the company’s mission to continue rolling out zero-emissions buses to protect communities across the US, saying:
Schools across America are driving towards a clean transportation future. Proterra congratulates Monroe County schools for their leadership in the growing movement of school districts that are embracing zero-emission, all-electric school buses. Now, with 200 Proterra Powered electric school buses on the road, we look forward to helping clean the air for more schoolkids and communities throughout the country.
Electrek’s Take
Each year 450,000 school buses travel over 4.3 billion miles, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Even though 200 is only a fraction of the number of school buses in the United States, it’s a start.
As of August 2022, US school districts have committed to 12,720 electric school buses, according to the latest information from the non-profit research organization, the World Resources Institute (WRI).
New incentives such as the EPA Clean School Bus Program, which provides $5 billion in EV school bus funding over the next five years, should help accelerate the adoption pace in the coming years. In fact, after unprecedented initial demand during the first round, the EPA nearly doubled funding to $965 million from $500 million.
School districts are welcoming the change at this point. Now it will come down to how quickly states and school district leaders can receive funding to implement electric school buses. Proterra is committed to leading the transition with its technology paving the way for safe, zero-emission electric school buses.
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The State of Michigan has announced a new partnership with wireless EV charging specialist Electreon and Commercial EV manufacturer Xos, Inc. Together, the companies have secured funding from the state to expand wireless charging availability for commercial vehicles, including UPS trucks in Detroit.
It’s been nearly a year since the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT), the City of Detroit, and Electreon ($ELWS) unveiled the first wireless EV charging roadway in the United States.
Michigan installed Electreon’s wireless inductive-charging coils (seen below) on 14th Street in Detroit between Marantette and Dalzelle streets to charge EVs equipped with Electreon receivers as they drive on the road.
At the time. MDOT and Detroit officials said the road would be used to test and perfect Electreon’s wireless EV charging technology in a real-world environment before “making it available to the public in the next few years.”
While the public will not be able to take advantage of wireless charging just yet, commercial EVs are gaining access thanks to a new partnership between Electreon, Xos ($XOS), and the State of Michigan.
Michigan progresses as US wireless EV charging leader
When Michigan announced the first wireless EV charging road in the US last year, officials shared hopes that the Great Lakes State and the city of Detroit could become leaders in the innovation and and deployment of such nascent technology.
Following a press release from Electreon, the State of Michigan confirmed details of the new partnership, which now includes commercial EV developer Xos, Inc. as well. The new commercial partnership is supported by $200,000 in funding from the Michigan Mobility Funding Platform (MMFP), building off the state’s “Make it in Michigan: economic strategy, developed by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) to invest in the state’s people, places and projects.
Through the partnership and coinciding state funding, Electreon will extend its wireless EV charging network and use cases in Michigan. Additionally, Electreon’s technology will be integrated into delivery step vans from Xos in order to “demonstrate wireless charging technological value and its potential to lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) in the electrification of commercial truck fleets.” Stefan Tongur, vice president of business development for Electreon, elaborated:
We’re excited to demonstrate how Electreon’s technology can optimize electric fleet usage and showcase the seamless integration of wireless charging into daily fleet operations, minimizing downtime and enabling charging across time and location. We’re proud to do this work in Michigan, a state fostering innovation and sustainable transportation solutions.
In addition to expanding wireless charging on Detroit’s first “electric roadway,” the Michigan project will enable the installation of stationary wireless charging at a UPS facility in Detroit. Xos co-founder and CEO Dakota Semler also spoke:
We are proud to partner with Electreon and support UPS to demonstrate the potential of wireless charging in commercial fleets. This innovative approach will revolutionize how we power our electric vehicles and drive fleet electrification forward.
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The iconic British luxury automaker is undergoing a major brand overhaul. With its official debut around the corner, Jaguar’s electric 4-door GT, the first of its new series, was spotted testing on British roads. The new images give us a closer look at what we can expect from the revamped Jag brand.
Jaguar’s new electric GT makes its first appearance
After building internal combustion-powered sports cars for over 75 years, Jaguar will become an all-electric luxury brand from 2025.
The company announced earlier this year that it will start fresh with an entirely new range of EVs. After killing off the F-Type, E-Pace, XF, and soon the F-Pace SUV, we are finally getting our first look at what the new branding will look like.
Jaguar’s new electric 4-door GT was caught testing on British roads. The camouflaged prototypes reveal a radically different look than the Jag models we are accustomed to.
You can see one of the biggest changes is the low-riding, extended silhouette, as opposed to the crossover SUV and sedan models like the F-Type and I-Pace, Jaguar’s first EV.
The front and rear bumper designs also appear much more aggressive and bold than previous models.
Jaguar’s electric GT is being put through the paces ahead of its debut. It has already completed tens of thousands of testing miles (virtual and real-world) and will soon hit public streets worldwide.
The new model will be built in Solihull, UK, where Jaguar recently ended production of its gas-powered models.
It will be the first to ride on Jaguar’s new JAE (Jaguar Electric Architecture), which will underpin its upcoming lineup of high-end luxury EVs with prices over £100,000 ($130,000). The electric GT will have a range of over 434 miles (700 km) and upwards of 575 hp, making it Jaguar’s most powerful car of all time.
Jaguar will debut its Design Vision Concept at Miami Art Week on December 2, 2024. Next Summer, it’s expected to make its official global debut ahead of deliveries in 2026.
What do you think of Jaguar’s new design based on what’s shown? Are you excited about the brand overhaul? Let us know in the comments below.
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Tesla has pushed a new (Supervised) Full Self-Driving update with the promised end-to-end neural networks for highway driving.
However, it’s only for newer vehicles.
“End-to-end” is what Tesla refers to as neural net-powered AI driving the vehicle from vision to controls rather than the controls being explicitly coded. It’s already the case in all widely released versions of (Supervised) Full Self-Driving (FSD) for city driving, but not for highway driving, which uses another software stack.
Tesla originally planned to deliver it for highway driving in October, but it was only delivered to a small number of vehicles.
In its latest AI roadmap, Tesla said that it would come the first week of November instead.
Now, Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of self-driving and AI, said that the latest release with end-to-end highway driving (v12.5.6.3) has been widely pushed to HW4 vehicle owners:
With the latest release (v12.5.6.3), FSD is using end-to-end neural networks for driving across highways, city streets and parking lots, and has now shipped widely for AI4 vehicles. Highway driving should be smoother, more natural and even safer than the previous explicit control stack. Check out the different driving styles to set speed and lane change preferences. Enjoy and let Tesla AI know if you have any feedback.
However, there’s no word for the millions of HW3 vehicle owners.
In fact, the only thing promised to HW3 vehicles, which Tesla now called AI3, in its last roadmap is this:
Improved v12.5.x models for AI3 city driving
As we have often reported this year, Tesla has reached the limits of the HW3 computer and now needs to optimize the code with every release despite still being far from its promise of unsupervised self-driving.
Electrek’s Take
This is annoying cause I could really use end-to-end on my HW3 car. I am on v12.5.4.2 and it has been a regression from v12.5.4.1 for me, especially on highways.
Yesterday, it almost drove me off-road when taking my highway exit, which is always a bit shaky because it is a short exit and FSD often swings itself into it. It’s a bit awkward, and my girlfriend never likes it, so I disengage FSD before taking the exit when she was with me, but this time, she wasn’t, and I had the new update.
It again swung left before going right into the exit, but this time, it went way too far, and I was in the shoulder by the time I took control.
I took this exit hundreds of times with FSD and it’s the first time it did that.
I am starting to think we won’t see much more improvements to FSD with HW3 cars and there’s no retrofit computer in sight.
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