GreenPower to deliver 88 school buses to West Virginia in 2025

GreenPower Motor Company revealed it plans to deliver an additional 88 all-electric Type D Beast and Type A Nano Beast school buses to school districts in West Virginia in GreenPower’s fiscal year 2025 which began April 1.

“GreenPower is currently manufacturing all-electric, purpose-built school buses purchased by the state of West Virginia in its South Charleston plant,” Fraser Atkinson, CEO of GreenPower, said. “Following behind that production are the school buses awarded to seven school districts in West Virginia under Round 2 of the EPA’s Clean School Bus Program.” School buses for other eastern markets like New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and western markets like Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada and Oregon, are in the fiscal 2025 production schedule.

In January, the EPA announced an $18,565,000 grant awarded to GreenPower of WV for the deployment of GreenPower’s all-electric, purpose-built, zero-emission school buses in seven West Virginia counties. The grant includes funding for the charging infrastructure to ensure a proper charging strategy for the deployment.

Atkinson noted that once delivery is complete, nearly 100 GreenPower all-electric school buses will be in operation in West Virginia.

The announcement of the planned deliveries comes on the heels of a record number of all-electric, purpose-built, zero-emission school bus deliveries during GreenPower’s just-ended 2024 fiscal year, the company said.

During fiscal year 2024, GreenPower said it delivered 29 Type D Beast and 12 Type A Nano Beast school buses across the country, for a total of 41 deliveries, an increase of 356% from the previous fiscal year.

GreenPower President Brendan Riley said that the commercial division also reached significant delivery levels in fiscal 2024. EV Star deliveries to customers other than Workhorse increased by 9% during the fiscal year with a total of 179 EV Star products being deployed during the fiscal year. During the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024, Workhorse resumed delivery of EV Star Cab & Chassis under the delivery contract entered into in March of 2022.

Daimler Truck North America (DTNA) is expanding the use of electric trucks for logistics operations across multiple business units and regions, including North Carolina, South Carolina, Arizona, Ohio, Michigan, and Saltillo, Mexico to transport components to manufacturing plants and parts distribution centers (PDCs).

DTNA started integrating Freightliner eCascadia battery electric semi-trucks, which were launched in 2022, into its logistics operation in the Pacific Northwest in Dec. 2023, as well as Daimler Truck Mexico’s truck manufacturing plant in Santiago in January. For short-haul operations, DTNA said it will begin using its Freightliner eM2 electric box trucks that were introduced to customers last year.