Zion becomes first national park with an all-electric shuttle bus service
Zion National Park’s shuttle fleet has become one of the first bus fleets in the US to go all electric, and the first at a National Park.
Zion National Park in Southern Utah is renowned for its colorful canyons and arches, and is one of the “mighty five” national parks in the region showing off Utah’s natural beauty.
The park, which is largely situated around a narrow canyon, started getting more and more visitors in the 1990s, leading to traffic issues. This led the park to close off most park roads to private traffic, and institute a shuttle system to bring visitors through the canyon and back and forth from the town of Springdale just outside the park.
Those buses went into service in 2000, and helped to revitalize the park by reducing noise and pollution from traffic, which are always a scourge in beautiful natural areas.
“The remarks we got from visitors in the very first summer were fantastic. They said, ‘You have given us back the canyon.’ They said, ‘We can hear the birds sing and the air is fresh.’ No longer were the traffic jams fouling the air, impacting the soundscape, and diminishing the visitor experience.”
Jeff Bradybaugh, Zion National Park Superintendent
However, those buses ran on propane, so they were still noisy and contribute to the degradation of natural environments due to their use of fossil fuels.
Now, Zion has upgraded its entire fleet to all-electric buses, rather than the previous propane buses, becoming the first fleet at any National Park to do so.
The fleet includes 30 all-electric buses to replace the 39 previous propane buses. The new buses are more spacious, quieter, and include air conditioning and better disability accommodations, which the previous buses did not have.
Best of all, they’re also more efficient, and therefore contribute less to the climate change that has made Zion’s summer days hotter and hotter (as humans apparently refuse to stop poisoning the only home we have).
The fleet’s full conversion was announced this week, but the buses have already been operating and shuttling visitors. Over Labor Day weekend, they shuttled 97,000 riders through the park – saving a huge amount of car trips, exhaust, and noise that would have otherwise been required. Zion says each shuttle replaces 29 cars on its roads.
The buses were largely funded by the US Department of Transportation through a grant program for nationally significant federal lands.
While this is the first National Park bus fleet to go all-electric, the National Park Service is working to transition other large bus fleets, like those at Grand Canyon, Acadia, Yosemite, Bryce Canyon, and Harpers Ferry, to all-electric buses. This is all part of the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to shift the entire federal fleet to electric vehicles.
And Zion hopes that it can serve as a role model for other bus fleets, whether federal or otherwise, and show how successful an all-electric bus fleet can be at reducing both air and noise pollution. “This is the state-of-the-art electric bus fleet in the country. It is going to set a standard for other national parks” said Robin Carnahan, administrator of the General Services Administration.
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The US solar industry just delivered another huge quarter, installing 11.7 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity in Q3 2025. That makes it the third-largest quarter on record and pushes total solar additions this year past 30 GW – despite the Trump administration’s efforts to kneecap clean energy.
According to the new “US Solar Market Insight Q4 2025” report from Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie, 85% of all new power added to the grid during the first nine months of the Trump administration came from solar and storage. And here’s the twist: Most of that growth – 73% – happened in red states.
Eight of the top 10 states for new installations fall into that category, including Texas, Indiana, Florida, Arizona, Ohio, Utah, Kentucky, and Arkansas. Utah jumped into the top 10 this quarter thanks to two big utility-scale projects totaling more than 1 GW.
But the report also flags major uncertainty ahead. Federal actions, including a July memo from the Department of the Interior (DOI), have slowed or stalled the approvals pipeline for utility-scale solar and storage. Without clarity on permitting timelines, Wood Mackenzie’s long-term utility-scale forecast through 2030 remains basically unchanged from last quarter.
“This record-setting quarter for solar deployment shows that the market is continuing to turn to solar to meet rising demand,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, SEIA’s president and CEO. She added that strong growth in red states underscores how decisively the market is shifting toward clean energy. “But unless this administration reverses course, the future of clean, affordable, and reliable solar and storage will be frozen by uncertainty, and Americans will continue to see their energy bills go up.”
Two new solar module factories opened this year in Louisiana and South Carolina, adding a combined 4.7 GW of capacity. That brings the total new US module manufacturing capacity added in 2025 to 17.7 GW. With a new wafer facility coming online in Michigan in Q3, the US can now produce every major component of the solar module supply chain.
“We expect 250 GW of solar to be installed from 2025 to 2030,” said Michelle Davis, head of solar research at Wood Mackenzie and lead author of the report. “But the US solar industry has more potential. With rising power demand across the country, solar could do even more if current constraints were eased.”
SEIA also noted that, following an analysis of EIA data, it found that more than 73 GW of solar projects across the US are stuck in permitting limbo and at risk of politically motivated delays or cancellations.
Read more: EIA: Solar + storage soar as fossil fuels stall through September 2025
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The spiritual successor to the beloved Chevy Geo Tracker, production of the new-for-2026 electric Spark EUV has officially begun in Brazil with more than 200 miles of range.
That’s right, kids. To know the Chevy Tracker is to love the Chevy Tracker. The tiny, top-heavy Suzuki-based SUV combined bold colors, fun styling, (relatively) good fuel economy, and real off-road chops (especially in ZR2 trim) with an affordable price tag to make the Tracker an early favorite among the serious rock-crawling crowds.
Like, really
While it’s still too early to tell whether or not the all-new Chevy Spark EUV will come even close to that little proto-SUV, it seems we won’t have to wait much longer to find out – GM Authority reports that production of the 2026 Chevy Spark EUV has officially begun at Comexport’s Planta Automotiva do Ceará (PACE) plant, in the state of Ceará, Brazil.
GM Brazil invested the equivalent of $73 million to get the PACE factory ready to assemble GM’s modern, zero-emissions Chevy crossover for the South American and Middle Eastern markets – an investment big enough to earn a visit from Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was on-hand for the December 3rd kickoff event.
“It’s not a car factory,” said Comexport Vice President and PACE shareholder, Rodrigo Teixeir. “(The) goal is to develop technology there, not simply assemble a vehicle.”
Production of the new Spark EUV began last week, with production of the equally new Chevy Captiva EV set to begin as early as Q1 of 2026.
2026 Chevy Spark EUV
The Made in Brazil Chevrolet Spark EUV is heavily based on the Chinese Baojun, and is powered by that vehicle’s single 75 kW (101 hp), 180 Nm (130 lb-ft) motor driving the front wheels. Power comes from the Baojun’s 42 kWh LFP battery that, with regenerative braking, is good for up to 360 km (220 miles) on the NEDC driving cycle.
Weirdly, the new Spark is also equipped with a 10.1″ infotainment screen and 8.8″ digital instrument cluster (above) that supports both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto standard – technology that GM claims lead to “unsafe” driver behaviors in North America.
Let us know what you think of the little electric SUV, and whether or not you think it would be a hit in the US (it would) in the comments.
SOURCE: GM Authority; images by GM, Harry Situations.
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