As GATRA Embraces Electrics, Others Hit Pause

Nearly two years ago, The Greater Attleboro Taunton Regional Transit Authority (GATRA), announced the addition of six new electric buses to its fleet of vehicles, serving riders from Franklin to the South Coast and from the Rhode Island border to Boston’s South Shore.

The GATRA team worked to secure funding for the buses from the massive Volkswagen Clean Air Settlement, purchasing them from manufacturer, Gillig, based in California.

According to Franklin Town Councilor Cobi Frongillo, who represents the town on the GATRA advisory board, the electric buses are used on fixed bus routes, primarily in Taunton and neighboring communities. And, he noted, the 2022 Climate Law (S.78) requires MassDOT to help every regional transit authority develop its own transit electrification rollout plan.

In July, he noted, GATRA purchased land in Wareham for increased maintenance capacity, as well as to accommodate anticipated electric bus and charging expansion.

Finally, he said, the GATRA Administrator has told him "We are very happy with our electric fleet and have four more coming in the next 2-3 years."

But, while GATRA claims to have had a positive experience with the technology, a recently completed study of both electric transit and electric school buses in Vermont painted a less rosy picture.

Like GATRA, the Vermonters took advantage of funds from the Volkswagen (VW) Settlement to acquire their buses. The purchase was viewed as something of an experiment to test the feasibility of the battery technology. And, a top conclusion was that “Electric school buses can work in the Vermont Context.”

However, the authors noted, “the pilot showed variations in reliability among vendors and found some limitations on range and performance during the harshest northeast weather conditions. However, even operating under reduced ranges with midday charging, buses had sufficient range and handling to adequately cover at least some of each district’s daily routes.”

But as the report went on, more serious concerns were revealed:

• The buses achieved their optimum efficiency only at temperatures above 65 degrees Fahrenheit.
• As temperatures dropped, vehicle range reduced in a relatively linear manner. At zero degrees Fahrenheit, the Lion bus ranges had dropped off by 30-40% of the nominal range advertised by the manufacturer.
• For Blue Bird buses, the range loss at zero degrees was closer to 80%.
• Both types of buses lost as much as half their range before temperatures reached the frost point (32 degrees Fahrenheit)
• Both Blue Bird buses were inoperable for most of the two winters in which they were evaluated.
• To some extent, this was addressed during the test by “continuous thermal management,” sometimes provided by auxiliary diesel heat [We think the authors are referring to kerosene-fueled space heaters], markedly aided the drivetrain on electric buses.
• [Counterintuitively] Reducing the percentage of driving that occurs while the vehicle’s batteries are at full capacity can significantly improve vehicle efficiency. Driving the vehicles further or not charging up the batteries to full capacity can achieve this result. When the batteries are ‘full’, there is no capacity to store energy from regenerative braking. Once there is battery capacity to store energy, vehicle efficiency for those first 10-20 miles can be increased by 16-25%

The study’s authors did go on to conclude, on a positive note, that there was less spending on fuel than with the diesel-powered fleet and, of course, a significant reduction in emissions. The full study can be found here.