DATTCO has 10 new electric school buses that will be used to transport students across the state.
The bus company started using three in New Britain in February for the CREC school routes. Two more will be used in the coming weeks to transport Middletown Public School Students. The remaining five will be used once charging stations are installed.
The feedback DATTCO has received from drivers and students so far has been positive.
“They love it. ... The kids love my bus,” said Amelian Fernandez, a school bus driver.
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“They're very quiet, they definitely give you a lot of acceleration, and they don't slow down on hills,” said Ronnie King, the product director for DATTCO. “I've had from the drivers that they enjoy driving them, they like the quietness, they like the smooth acceleration, and they feel safer driving them because the buses have regenerative braking, which means as you lead off the throttle, it takes the momentum and puts it through the motor back into the batteries.”
The electric buses are considerably more expensive than standard diesel buses, but DATTCO applied for funding through a grant from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. That helped lower the cost from what DATTCO would traditionally have paid.
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The buses can run between 120 and 200 miles on a charge depending on the size of the battery pack and they take about five hours to fully charge. Drivers now have to plug in instead of fuel up.
The lithium-ion batteries have caused some concern though. A public transit bus caught on fire in Hamden in July. Three people were sent to the hospital and firefighters said these fires can be hard to put out because of a chemical process that makes them extremely hot. The fires can continually burn and re-ignite.
But the vice president of school bus for DATTCO said they’re doing all they can to make sure to keep everyone safe.
“Safety is obviously the first priority in anything we do because we are transporting the most precious cargo. We're not transporting tins of beans or vegetables. These are the kids of Connecticut. So, we've put a lot of time and effort into making sure we bought the right vehicles with the safest setup. And we've given the drivers the right training. So, they love these vehicles. And it’s making a difference for us,” said Bryony Chamberlain, the vice president of school nus for Dattco.
