Efficient Drivetrains (EDI) announces availability of EDI PowerDrive 4000ev drivetrain; suitable for Type-A school buses
15 August 2018
Efficient Drivetrains, Inc. (EDI) announced the availability of its EDI PowerDrive 4000ev, suited for Type-A school buses. The Class-4 offering rounds out the company’s all-electric school bus solution portfolio, spanning the full spectrum for Type C, D, and A, in the North American market.
With a captive ridership of 26 million students, the number of vehicles in the nation’s school bus fleet is bigger than commercial buses, trains, and air travel services combined, reaching almost half a million buses.
Traditional vehicles deployed each morning and afternoon expose students and the surrounding community to 15 times more mobile particulates than their cleaner, electrified counterparts. Overall, the industry is accelerating the adoption of zero-emissions buses to improve air quality and reduce exposing children and local communities to toxic emissions. Paired with available government subsidy and incentive programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, school districts can now benefit from low cost of ownership and sustainable transport for its students.
EDI has already made significant strides in the electrification of the school bus market, working with OEMs to provide its EDI PowerDrive solution as a vehicle electrification kit and developer’s support program.
The EDI PowerDrive electrification kit enables school bus manufacturers to rapidly bring EV solutions to market, and includes a high-efficiency drivetrain (the EDI PowerDrive), vehicle control and telematics software (EDI PowerSuite), and the requisite training and support infrastructure to stand up production lines.
To accelerate market introductions, EDI is also available to install the powertrain systems and perform vehicle integration as a service for OEMs as they bring solutions to market.
The company’s all-electric powertrain, the EDI PowerDrive 7000ev is HVIP certified on leading OEM platforms for Type C and D buses, with Type A following later this year.
How do low budget school districts afford these?
Posted by: SJC | 15 August 2018 at 10:43 AM
"How do low budget school districts afford these?"
Largely they can't -- nor can a "high-budget" district, really. The exception is areas that have magnanimous incentives, like California's HVIP that awards US$220,000 PER BUS.
https://www.californiahvip.org/eligible-technologies/#your-clean-vehicles
Of course one of the reasons that there are so many rent-seekers in this business is that the taxpayer funds are so lavish. Currently EDI has an agreement with Adomani, whose sole job is to help districts understand incentive applications and line up the buyer with a dealer. For this vital job Adomani receives a cut. They are MANDATORY participants in the process for Blue Bird class C and D e-School Buses.
BTW Adomani have no engineering talent on their staff of 14 people and will book $6M in sales in 2018 being an incentive middleman. Not enough for ya? The company, which is unprofitable and burns a couple $million cash on the $6M in sales, has a market capitalization of $50M and PLENTY of shares held by key execs (all former school bus salesmen).
But by all means we should subsidize the hell out of them For The Children.
Posted by: Herman | 15 August 2018 at 11:12 AM
Herman:
The details are nasty and expensive; but, as you say it's for the good of the children. It's been all too long they have had to breathe toxic fumes.
Posted by: Lad | 15 August 2018 at 12:57 PM
You could eliminate >90% of the "toxic fumes" for 10% of the price difference per bus.
The result of buying a few halo electric buses is that the net overall exposure to any school's bus riding population will be worse than a much larger fleet purchase of Propane buses. The longer that states and municipalities throw money at inefficient application of electrification technology (>$200k delta PER BUS, somehow oddly more or less matching the subsidy), the longer the economics will lag.
And the accpetance of these things as "nasty details" is to tolerate corrosive and wasteful procurement behaviors. Those bureaucratic processes will never be 100% free of corruption -- human nature prevents it -- but waving off gross excess as a cost of "saving lives" is a bad judgment.
Posted by: Herman | 15 August 2018 at 02:44 PM
Are the ongoing operation/maintenance savings, (during the life of the e-units) returned to the States as refunds for the initial purchase subsidies?
Posted by: HarveyD | 16 August 2018 at 12:58 PM
I could see converting diesel to electric, save some costs.
Posted by: SJC | 20 August 2018 at 12:35 AM