Electric school buses finally make headway in the U.S., but hurdles still stand

The number of electric school buses on the road or on order across the country has more than tripled in the last two years, according to the World Resources Institute's Electric School Bus Initiative.

The first electric school buses in the United States began running a decade ago in three school districts in California, providing a ride that was much less noisy, smelly and dirty than the diesel buses kids and parents were used to.

Yet despite the availability of the technology all these years, fewer than one percent of the 489,000 school buses in the U.S. were electric at the end of 2023.

That means nearly all the buses that take many of the nation's children to school still run on a fuel that sends contaminants into the air and is carcinogenic.

But that may be changing. The number of electric school buses on the road or on order across the country has more than tripled in the last two years, according to the World Resources Institute's Electric School Bus Initiative.

That's meant ten times as many students riding on electric school buses -- from around 20,000 in 2020 to 200,000 3 years later, according to WRI. The number of states with electric bus legislation or goals also grew, from two to 14 between 2020 and last year.

Still, parents, advocates and organizations come up against a number of challenges in getting electric school bus buy-in elsewhere.

"It's just a matter of breaking down these barriers," said Alicia Cox, a mother of two in Jackson, Wyoming. Her state is the only to not have a single district with an electric bus operating or on order.