Everett Transit re-calibrating its EV bus plans

EVERETT — Everett Transit’s plan to dispense with nine of its electric buses isn’t part of a paradigm shift for the agency, its director said last week. It has 14 more electrics arriving over the next few months to keep half its fleet electric.
The past few months, though, it has been ordering reconditioned diesels as part of its fleet turnover.
Last week, Everett Transit got council authorization to buy seven more for $2.1 million of Transit’s money. These used buses from 2011 will get the agency through for a few years.
Everett Transit director Mike Schmieder described his long-term fleet plan is to go half-electric, half hybrid-diesel.
Schmieder’s predecessor Tom Hingson had a 2020 goal to take Everett Transit’s fleet almost 100% electric by the end of this decade.
Schmieder said he isn’t refusing electrics, but with the advent of renewable diesel, going half-electric, half hybrid-diesel is the “direction we’re aiming.”
A factor is its diesel buses are now on cleaner fuel.
Everett Transit last fall began buying alternative diesel for its fossil fuel buses, changing from standard diesel to a diesel formulation called R99. Switching to R99 required no modifications to the diesel buses themselves. The fuel trucks simply bring this different diesel.
R99 is a blend that heavily uses wastes from animal rendering and other biological oils, and it is different than biodiesel that uses vegetable and animal fats, according to fuels distributor Star Oilco of Portland, Oregon.
It began escalating in domestic production about seven years ago, federal charts show. R99’s nearest maker is the BP refinery in Blaine, Washington at Cherry Point, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
While it won’t result in a zero emissions fleet, R99 creates substantially lower emissions than standard diesel.
“The big payoff with R99 is emissions; a cleaner running bus,” Schmieder said.
Schmieder also sees vulnerabilities in going heavily electric.
In a disaster emergency, transit has a role in getting people moved. If half the buses don’t need an electric grid, the response isn’t impeded by charging, he described.

Broken buses
The agency is dispensing with its nine Proterra electric buses. Of the nine, four simply don’t work, and they’ve run into problems getting parts.
Proterra went bankrupt in late 2023 and split up assets. Longstanding heavy duty electric vehicle maker PhoenixEV bought Proterra’s transit bus division.
Transit says it can’t get new parts for its Proterras. “That is a big part of it” for this decision, Schmieder said.
Proterra's successor PhoenixEV and its parent Phoenix Motor Cars did not answer questions from the Tribune about these issues by press time.
Transit got its first Proterras in 2018.
One had a rocky debut with a blown inverter. It took a month to fix that one, Schmieder said.
“The Proterras from that day have continued to have problems,” Schmieder said.
Its other 10 electric buses running routes, by comparison, have done well, Schmieder said. Those were built by Gillig. The agency has 14 more Gilligs coming this year. The rest of Everett Transit’s current fleet are all Gilligs, too.
Schmieder described the situation that Proterra is a battery maker that tried to build buses, while Gillig is a bus maker that added electric buses as a product option. The two use different charging methods.

Will go up for sale
To dispense its nine Proterra buses, bought for $945,000 a pop using grants, it will seek waivers to auction some of them off and return 85% of those sale proceeds to the Federal Transportation Administration.
The reconditioned diesel buses are sourced from a California bus refurbishment company. These Gilligs should show up in about six months.
The agency already bought five reconditioned diesels from them in the fall for about $1.34 million.
Schmieder said he’s getting seven buses for the price of two electrics.
He also found the Proterra electrics are not one-to-one with diesel-hybrids for operations, and has data to back it up.
A few years ago, Everett Transit did a four-year sample analysis of its Proterra electric buses against its diesel-hybrids. The results confirmed the Proterras gave six-tenths of the day’s worth of running time before needing a recharge. A diesel-hybrid can yield 18 hours of operating time versus eight or nine on the electrics before needing a recharge, according to Schmieder. Cold weather hamstrung the running time further.
Why not store the Proterras? Schmieder described why that adds complications: Keeping them would see Everett Transit’s total fleet exceed 50 when the new buses come in. Fifty’s a threshold that places it in a “bigger division” when competing for grants among transit agencies. Their presence also hinders the ability for Everett Transit to ask for grants to buying brand-new buses when it has some low-mileage electrics in the back that aren’t being used, even if they’re broken.