Classic yellow school bus gets a green makeover
There’s a nice coming-full-circle aspect to Fraser Atkinson’s role as chairman of GreenPower Motor Company.
“My grandfather was a conductor for B.C. Electric, running the overhead-cable electric trolleys,” Atkinson says as we stand beside his Vancouver-based company’s latest creation, an all-electric school bus.
Dubbed the Synapse 72 — for its seating capacity of 72 — it is the world’s first purpose-built allelectric school bus. And it’s creating quite the buzz.
Atkinson reports school boards in Southern California have raised their hands for 11 buses, and he’s been doing the rounds in B.C. and Ontario to drum up interest and eventual business.
“Our strategy is to show people what is possible, and not just with school buses,” he explains. “But the school bus is kind of the thin edge of the wedge.”
The rest of that wedge includes all manner of all-electric people haulers, including airport shuttles, transit buses, tourism-geared coaches and even double-deckers. A GreenPower double-decker was used all summer in a pilot project with Victoria-based sightseeing tour operator CVS Tours.
“The feedback on the bus itself has been fantastic,” he says of the double-decker test run. “We have had some charging issues, but that’s why we do a pilot.”
Atkinson recently met with the City of Vancouver Sustainable Energy Group and took them for a ride in the Synapse 72. That bus features nine battery packs for a total of 160 kWh, which translates to a full-charge range of about 170 kilometres.
“That’s complete overkill for a school bus that does a two-hour route in the morning and a twohour route in the afternoon,” notes Atkinson., adding that’s why the bus can be configured with a battery system ranging from 100 to 200 kWh, translating to a range of 120 to 225 kilometres.
What GreenPower has discovered in places such as Ontario is that the larger school bus operators often put their busses on double duty for charters and shuttles (for sport teams, field trips, etc.). That flexibility in the number of battery packs allows customers to get the range that best suits their needs.
This particular bus is an 11-metre model. The company also builds a nine-metre school bus and a shuttle bus, where the body is different but the chassis is the same and seating can be tailored for use, including a 48-seat configuration with bucket seats.