SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The first all-electric school buses are being rolled out on the roads for four West Virginia school districts to start using for the first time this week.
GreenPower Motor Company held a ceremony unveiling the new electric buses at its manufacturing facility in South Charleston Wednesday morning.
Company officials among local, state, and federal representatives, the school district’s superintendents, and other dignitaries welcomed the first Nano BEAST vehicles, which will be delivered to Kanawha, Cabell, Clay, and Monongalia county schools.
Two types of the buses that were rolled out Wednesday included a 40 foot bus with 84 seats, and four smaller, handicapped accessible buses. One of each of the smaller buses were what was being given to each of the county school districts, and they were free to them through a grant they were awarded by GreenPower.
After moving into West Virginia and their facility in South Charleston a year ago, GreenPower Motors President Brendan Riley told MetroNews that having the facility in the Mountain State fits the company’s Mid-Atlantic plan of manufacturing the buses for distribution on the East Coast.
“Electric vehicles don’t typically get delivered under their own power, they get dropped off, and that’s expensive and has other bad optics to it, so building them close to where you’re deploying them is very important, and that’s part of our strategy,” he said.
Riley said the company’s two major hubs are in California for West Coast production and now in West Virginia for the East.
He said they chose West Virginia as a hub for production because of the business-friendly nature of the state and the hardworking people who live here.
“The concept was we needed a place that was a right-to-work state that had a lot of talented, skilled and semi-skilled employees,” Riley said.
Kanawha County Schools Superintendent Tom Williams said their new electric, wheelchair accessible bus would be going to the St. Albans bus garage following the ceremony, and it would be used for the county’s special education department.
He said they were very excited to get the safer, more energy-efficient bus in service for students. However, Williams added that he was also excited to see the impact its production has had in creating more jobs for people to stay in the state for work, such as one young man he met at Wednesday’s event who had graduated from George Washington High School and is currently working at the facility.
“He’s raising his family right here in Kanawha County and he now has a great job to be able to do that,” Williams said. “In the past I’ve talked to students from St. Albans when I was the principal who currently work here, and they are able to stay here and raise their families and I think that is the most important impact that it has.”
Williams said they currently have a charging station for the bus on order and it will be arriving soon. In addition, he said they will have to install cameras and make a couple of other adjustments to the bus before it can be operational for students.
Williams was also excited to announce that Kanawha County Schools purchased another electric bus which is expected to arrive in the county in late spring or earlier summer.
Cabell County Schools Superintendent Dr. Ryan Saxe said they were also excited to be receiving one of the first in electric bus rollouts. He said the special needs bus was a good first step in moving into a new chapter of transportation for the county’s schools.
“They are quiet, they’re energy-efficient, they don’t have any emissions, and so that I think that brings a lot of comfort to our families,” he said.
Saxe said they were also one of the first to test drive the new buses during GreenPower’s pilot program which took place across 18 West Virginia counties earlier in the spring. He said this gave the school system’s transportation department, as well as Cabell County fire and EMS a layout of how the bus functions and its safety protocols.
Saxe said along with the new bus, the county is also getting the charger for it locally, as well, and they will then be ready for it to hit the road for good.
“I think we’re really ready for this next step, so we’re really excited,” Saxe said. “We’re also really excited that in Cabell County this being the first electric school bus that we have, the charging station for this bus and any other subsequent bus purchases that we make, is actually also manufactured right here in Cabell County.”
He said having both the electric bus and charger be manufactured locally, this puts money back into the county and the local economy, and it keeps the process as homegrown as possible.
Several workers of GreenPower who helped build the buses from the ground up were also in attendance at Wednesday’s ceremony. Justin Bailey was one of them, and he said after being born and raised in West Virginia, it’s great to have a company of this kind he can now stay in his home state and work for.
“It feels amazing to be a part of something at the very start, especially to have a whole different generation of buses being built now,” he said.
GreenPower is looking to add up to 900 new jobs in the state. Bailey said this will benefit West Virginia for years to come.
“It feels amazing bringing jobs here, especially when we’re contributing to our kids and the next generation of building,” said Bailey.
More than 40 electric buses were purchased for $15 million during the 2023 legislative session.
There will be another grant cycle for the larger transit model buses known as the BEAST, and more West Virginia counties will have the opportunity to receive the grant to get their own electric bus for their school district.
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