Dirty School Bus? Plug It In

Diesel school buses are typically high polluters. But production has begun on environmentally-friendlier electric-diesel hybrid buses, and school districts in 11 states have made orders.

1 minute read

April 4, 2007, 2:00 PM PDT

By Nate Berg


"Ewan Pritchard wants to turn that soot-spewing school bus into a clean, green plug-in-hybrid machine. High mileage. No more exhaust cloud at each stop."

"'When we first talked about this, manufacturers acted as if we were asking them to build flying cars or something,' says Pritchard, hybrid program manager for Advanced Energy, a small nonprofit energy-consulting company in Raleigh, N.C."

"The nation's biggest school-bus maker has orders for 19 buses from districts in 11 states – including Washington, California, Texas, Iowa, Arkansas, and North Carolina."

"In Bradenton, Fla., Manatee School District officials last month became proud owners of the nation's first two plug-in hybrid school buses."

Monday, April 2, 2007 in The Christian Science Monitor

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