Together with its with its partners at Highland Electric, Blue Bird, and local Exelon utility ComEd, the West Aurora school district kicked off this week by deploying 27 fully electric school buses — the largest such deployment in the state. Here’s how they made it happen.
The new Blue Bird electric school buses will be rolling up to 77 kids each out to West Aurora schools this morning, promising those students clean, quiet operation and more than 130 miles of all-electric range courtesy of their 194 kWh lithium-ion NMC battery packs. Those batteries will be sending electrons to a Cummins Accelera PowerDrive 7000 drive system and TM4 SUMO electric motor — a smooth and capable unit putting out 250 kW (~350 hp) of power and some 950 Nm (700 lb-ft) of torque.
These buses are more than zippy enough, in other words, to get kids safely and quickly up to speed (even if they’re not exactly CoolBus-level quick)…