Back
Three electric school buses will kick-start the state’s groundbreaking vehicle-to-grid pilot program once school’s out, with more EVs to be added in the coming months.
After the school year ends in the Massachusetts towns of Acton and Boxborough, the district’s electric buses will mostly stay put in a parking lot. But they won’t sit idle all summer.
The three vehicles will charge up their nearly 200-kilowatt-hour batteries overnight, when the power supply is at its cleanest and cheapest, then send energy back to the grid from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on days when the grid is strained. The district will earn revenue for the power it shares, perhaps even enough to cover the costs of charging up during the school year, said Kate Crosby, energy manager for the Acton-Boxborough school district. Plus, the strategy will help lower the emissions and cost of the region’s electricity supply.
“The more we plug in batteries to the grid, the less we use peaker plants,” Crosby said. “They will help to stabilize the grid, help to reduce the cost of electricity for all ratepayers, and they’ll help make the grid cleaner.”
Acton-Boxborough’s school buses are the first vehicles to plug in to a Massachusetts program that aims to demonstrate and investigate the potential of “vehicle-to-everything” technologies, more commonly known as V2X. These systems use bidirectional chargers, which can power up a vehicle as well as send the energy stored in an EV’s battery back to a building or the grid.
Supporters say V2X technologies can yield a host of benefits. They can lower emissions by using stored energy generated at times when the grid is consuming less fossil fuel. They can help users offset their electricity bills by compensating them for power sent to the grid. They contribute to resilience when the power goes out. Plus, they can keep prices lower for everyone by sending cheaper power to the grid during times of high demand.
So far, however, widescale adoption has been elusive. Pilot programs across the U.S. and abroad have tested the possibilities, but they haven’t gained much traction in the face of high upfront costs, technical complexity, the huge variation among what equipment works with what vehicles, and the lack of established plans to compensate users for the power they pour back into the grid.
Massachusetts hopes its initiative will make some headway against these obstacles. At an event last week, the planners behind the demonstration program discussed what they’ve achieved so far, what they’ve learned along the way, and what problems remain.
The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, an economic development agency, announced the demonstration program in early 2025, with the goal of giving away up to 100 bidirectional chargers to a variety of users. Participants were announced in February 2026: five school districts, four municipalities, and 30 residents. In order to understand how the systems function in a wide range of settings, the planners selected projects in all geographical corners of the state, and in rural, urban, and suburban areas served by 10 different utilities. The installations will include six different types of chargers plugging into eight different vehicles, from buses and pickup trucks to SUVs and compact hatchbacks.
“It’s not just about getting the right vehicle and the right chargers,” said Sally Griffith, transportation electrification program manager for energy consulting firm Resource Innovations, which is working with the state to run the program. “It’s about the whole system — how all of this needs to work together,” she said at the event.
Between 10 and 15 chargers are now installed and awaiting authorization to begin bidirectional charging. The rest are expected to be online by September.
Already, some challenges have been identified. The most pressing, speakers at the event said, have to do with finding a financial model that works.
For one, the systems are pricey: $15,000 to $40,000 for a residential setup, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center estimates. Pilot programs can help defray costs for small numbers of users for a limited time, but a long-term, reliable compensation plan is needed to get any meaningful number of EV owners to make the leap.
But it turns out those compensation programs can be tricky to design. In Massachusetts, one major discovery so far has been the conflict between state solar incentives and the ConnectedSolutions program, which compensates battery owners for sending power onto the grid. Existing technology can’t tell the difference between electrons sent from solar panels and those coming from batteries. For a home with both solar panels and a bidirectional charger, it would be impossible to separate the solar power that should receive net-metering incentives from the EV battery power that would receive payment from ConnectedSolutions.
The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center had to immediately disqualify roughly 75% of the nearly 300 residential applicants for the V2X program because their homes had solar power, said Elijah Sinclair, the center’s senior program manager.
The state was aware there might be a conflict, but the scale took program planners by surprise, delaying the selection of participants and therefore the deployment of chargers.
One possible answer could lie in a program that compensates virtual power plants — networks of distributed energy resources like solar panels, batteries, and demand management — rather than providing different incentives for each component of the system, Steve Letendre, senior adviser at the Vehicle-Grid Integration Council, an EV charging advocacy group, told event attendees.
“We believe it’s a mechanism by which we can bring EVs onto the grid in a way that maximizes their value,” he said.
An unexpected bright spot so far has been the ease of interconnection, the process of formalizing agreements with utilities for hooking up an energy resource to the grid, Sinclair said.
“Utility interconnection was expected to be a big barrier,” he said. “But everyone has been just awesome to work with, and interconnection hasn’t slowed us down.”
The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center will collect data from participants for the rest of the year. By the end of the year, it aims to publish a comprehensive guidebook on what it’s learned about the cost, system design, and technical and regulatory barriers, with the goal of helping other agencies and states replicate the program.
In the meantime, the students and bus drivers of Acton-Boxborough will be enjoying quieter rides without any diesel fumes, said Crosby, the district energy manager.
“We are improving their quality of life immediately, and helping to create a cleaner, more stable future for them,” she said. “There’s nothing that matters more to us.”
President Donald Trump and the GOP phased out tax credits for all forms of consumer cleantech last year — but EVs took the biggest blow.
Once upon a time, Americans could get big federal tax incentives for buying electric vehicles, heat pumps, rooftop solar, and home batteries. But the Trump administration scrapped those tax breaks last year — and no category of household cleantech has suffered more as a result than EVs.
Consumer spending on EVs has fallen off a cliff since the phaseout of the $7,500 federal tax credit at the end of last September.
In a rush to snap up that incentive before it disappeared, Americans spent a record $31 billion on EVs in Q3 2025 — only for that figure to plummet to around $18 billion for each of the last two quarters, per new data from the Clean Investment Monitor, a joint project of Rhodium Group and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.
It’s the equivalent of turning back the clock to early 2023 in terms of spending on EVs, which made up nearly 10% of new car sales in the U.S. in 2025.
The effects have been less dire for other consumer cleantech, like distributed electricity and storage — primarily rooftop solar and home batteries — as well as heat pumps.
Under the 2023 Inflation Reduction Act, consumers could access tax credits that covered 30% of the cost of rooftop solar and home storage systems with no cap, as well as incentives that covered 30% of heat pumps up to a limit of $2,000 per tax year. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated those incentives last December.
Investment in rooftop solar and home batteries didn’t drop as dramatically after the expiration of the tax credits, and sales of heat pumps actually rose a little in Q1 2026.
That suggests the EV tax credit was more motivating to Americans than the other incentives.
But the decline in EV sales so far this year may also be explained in part by broader trends in the auto sector. In the U.S., overall new vehicle sales were down nearly 7% year over year in Q1. In the current volatile economic climate, people are just buying fewer new cars.
Regardless, the bottom line is clear: New EVs are selling slowly in the U.S., far slower than in many other parts of the world, and far slower than climate advocates had hoped for. It’s unclear when the market will recover from its post-tax-credit malaise, but in the meantime, there is a bright spot: Used EVs are about the same price as used gasoline cars, they’re increasingly available, and they’re flying off lots.
A developer building chargers at home-improvement stores discusses the promise — and pitfalls — of siting EV infrastructure in major retailers’ parking lots.
Menards is a Midwest staple: The Wisconsin-based chain, known for its “Save BIG Money” slogan, is the nation’s third-largest home-improvement retail brand, behind Home Depot and Lowe’s. But in Illinois, it’s slowly becoming more than just a place for folks to pick up ceiling hooks and gardening gloves, as developers eye the big-box store as a promising spot to build public EV chargers.
Two companies — JOJO Superfast EV Charging and charger manufacturer XCharge North America — announced last month that they aim to install chargers across nine of the brand’s Illinois stores. They’ve already outfitted two suburban Chicago Menards with four dual-port chargers, meaning eight cars can charge simultaneously at each store, and another suburban Chicago site is under construction. These add to the chargers that other firms have already installed at Menards in other cities, including the Chicago suburb of Dolton.
While these projects may be limited in scale, they represent a key strategy to convince more people to get EVs: make it convenient to charge as they go about daily routines.
“People in the Chicagoland area really enjoy going to Menards,” said Alex Urist, co-founder and senior vice president of marketing at XCharge North America, noting that as a Northeasterner, he was intrigued by the Midwestern affection for the company.
Installations like these “have a direct effect on the adoption of EVs, because they increase the perceived — and actual — availability of chargers” in places people visit regularly, he continued.
The U.S. currently has tens of thousands of public chargers and counting, located along highways as well as at parking garages, shopping centers, hotels, and public buildings. But that growth will need to continue to get more consumers comfortable with electrifying their ride. This is especially true in states with ambitious electrification goals like Illinois, which aims to get 1 million EVs on the road by 2030. Meeting such targets became more challenging last year as the Trump administration axed federal EV incentives and tried to freeze billions in funding for charging networks, although Iran war–driven gasoline price spikes and increasingly cheap used EVs may bolster the market.
Big-box stores anchored in suburban shopping centers are natural places for EV chargers. People frequently drop by to run multiple errands and grab lunch or coffee, so they can charge as they check items off their to-do list.
“At the end of the day, this business is about real estate,” Urist said. “The charger works when it’s in the right place.”
Urist feels that big-box stores are among the “different pockets emerging” as EV charging sites. “Walmart is really leading the charge on this,” he said, and Ikea has ports at nearly all its U.S. locations.
But installing chargers at big-box stores and outdoor malls involves overcoming some hurdles. For one thing, the company that owns the store may not own the parking area. And identifying the right location for chargers within sprawling lots is not easy: Ideally, the chargers would be near a store’s entrance for convenience’s sake, but that might be far from the hookup to the local grid, creating extra costs and construction.
“Adding 25 feet can add an additional $10,000 in conduit work and trenching,” Urist said.
Putting chargers behind a store, if that’s where the nearest power source is, runs the risk that drivers don’t realize the ports are there, and may make it less convenient for shoppers to walk to nearby establishments. Meanwhile, charger installation and maintenance may threaten to block off parts of a parking lot or store access for periods of time.
“EV charging and infrastructure development is a lot more challenging than customers see,” Urist said. “People say it would be great to have chargers at McDonald’s. I’ve looked at a few McDonald’s. It gets logistically difficult. Is the location going to impact how that drive-through functions? Are you going to have clogs in the parking spaces?”
The number of partners who must collaborate to make such projects a reality adds to the complexity.
For the Menards project, XCharge North America supplies the chargers, monitors them, and offers an extended warranty that includes labor and parts. JOJO Superfast, which owns and operates the chargers, collects revenue from drivers who use them.
ComEd, the utility serving northern Illinois, is considering funding the site preparation for the two Menards stores with operational chargers through its “make-ready” rebate program. The state of Illinois is also providing incentives through its clean energy programs, according to Kim Biggs, spokesperson for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. State legislators helped make it all possible by passing laws with ambitious clean energy mandates and funding. Over the last three years, he state has funded chargers at over 575 locations, almost a third of which are up and running, according to a state map.
“As the federal supports dissipate, states and utilities are increasingly required to assume a greater role in driving continued EV market growth and ensuring the timely deployment of essential charging infrastructure,” Biggs said.
She called the Menards project “a strong example of how public funding and private-sector collaboration can accelerate deployment of EV infrastructure in practical, high-use settings.”
Urist said that one of XCharge’s products could be particularly useful at big-box stores and similar locations. The company’s GridLink is essentially an EV charger outfitted with a small battery that can fill up on grid power or from an on-site solar panel.
“It can pull power from the grid slowly throughout the day and store it so that when an EV pulls up, the charger pulls from both the grid and its internal battery simultaneously,” Urist explained, noting that over 25 GridLink units have been deployed across the U.S. and Canada.
The battery can reduce strain on the grid, allowing GridLink to be installed in places with less built-out electrical networks. “It’s a great way to get high-speed [charging] infrastructure into communities that have traditionally been overlooked in the energy transition,” Urist said.
For example, a GridLink unit is helping Detroit electrify its municipal fleet, providing charging at a Department of Public Works site with a limited grid connection, he said.
Urist noted that GridLink chargers could also provide vehicle-to-grid services, wherein a utility pays a charger owner for providing storage on the grid.
ComEd does not currently offer a vehicle-to-grid program but is studying the possibility, and it launched a pilot last year involving school buses.
“Even when a project does not directly provide grid services today,” ComEd spokesperson Anthony Garcia said, “installations like this help inform how ComEd designs infrastructure upgrades, demand management strategies, and future programs that ensure EV charging can grow without compromising reliability for all customers.”
With gas prices up and more affordable options hitting lots, used EVs are looking like a sweet deal. We offer some useful tips to help you make the best purchase.
A year ago, Crystal Bright was freaking out. The Charlotte, North Carolina–based interior designer had just separated from her partner and needed to figure out how to stay afloat financially.
She could have taken on more work, Bright said, but that would have meant spending less time with her son, who’s now 8 years old. So she reasoned, “Let me just save money instead of figure out how to make money.”
A used electric vehicle turned out to be the key to solving her financial woes.
Last May, she bought a 2013 Nissan Leaf for $3,000 outright. That let her cut her $400 monthly payment on her previous car and liberated her from the $200 a month she used to pay for gas. The lower maintenance cost of owning an EV has also put another $200 back in her pocket each month. With $800 total per month in savings, Bright has been able to move with her son from an apartment in which she didn’t feel safe to a “beautiful townhouse.”
Across the U.S., gasoline prices have spiked to $4.50 per gallon on average because of the war in the Middle East. But Bright is able to recharge mostly using the copious free public charging available locally, and she can top off at home with her 100-foot extension cord if she needs to. “I have no idea what gas costs, thank goodness,” she said.
More drivers want to be insulated like that. The market for used EVs is surging; their average cost of $35,895 is now competitive with that of used gas cars (average $34,799).
If you’re interested in buying a used EV for the financial savings — not to mention reduced air and climate pollution — here’s how to make sure you get one that’s right for you.
Figure out what range you actually need, based on how much you typically drive and how frequently you’ll charge, recommends Desiree Moore, program manager at Drive Clean Colorado, a state program that aims to reduce greenhouse gas pollution from vehicles.
On average, Americans are on the road less than 30 miles a day. But Moore often drives long distances for work, so she’s eyeing a newer Leaf or Ford Mach-E to get at least 200 miles to 300 miles on a single charge, she said. InsideEVs, U.S. News & World Report, and Recurrent, a company that aggregates data on vehicle battery health, are a few of the sources that list their top used EV picks, which will give you a sense of the best range for your buck.
Also get familiar with the discounts available in your area. While the Trump administration vaporized federal tax credits for new and used EVs, nonprofits Veloz and Rewiring America have tools to help you look up local incentives.
But the most important EV research might be what you do in person. “Drive as many as you possibly can, because there’s such a difference in driving style and acceleration and turning radius — all of the things that you would expect from any used car,” said Andrew Garberson, Recurrent’s head of growth and research.
Potentially hundreds of dollars a year or more, depending on several factors, including your current car, how much you drive, shifting gas prices, and whether you can charge on the cheap, like at home with a discounted EV rate from your utility — or, less commonly, for free like Bright does. Filling up at home in 2026 can be like buying gas at $1.60 per gallon.
You can play around with different online tools to get a sense of the savings that come with switching to an EV. For example, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Vehicle Cost Calculator lets you compare the total cost of ownership for specific vehicle makes and models. And while the AFLEET TCO Calculator from DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory doesn’t have that capability, it allows you to toggle the cost of electricity. (The Vehicle Cost Calculator auto-sets power prices based on your state, though you may be able to get a better rate with your utility.) Both tools let you input the current price of gas.
Here’s an example from giving the AFLEET tool a spin: Under the assumptions of driving 12,400 miles per year, $3.50-per-gallon gas, and Xcel Energy Colorado’s best time-of-use rate of about $0.08 per kilowatt-hour, the calculator estimated that over 10 years an EV would save more than $11,000 in fuel costs and more than $8,000 in maintenance.
Beyond running an Internet search for “used EVs near me,” look to local dealers, many of which have upped their EV game. Bright scoped out listings on Carvana, and ultimately went with a car she found on Facebook.
You can also check out online marketplaces such as Edmunds and Cars.com. These platforms include Recurrent’s forecasts on vehicles’ remaining range, which are based on real-world driving data shared by more than 30,000 vehicle owners.
The heart of an EV is its battery. Info on its condition might be available in an online listing, as mentioned above.
But you can do a live check, too. When you turn the EV on, take a look at its current charge and estimated range and compare that with the predicted range on a full charge, Recurrent’s Garberson said. As you take it for a test drive, make sure the figures on the dash don’t nosedive.
Battery replacements, while rare, typically cost $5,000 to $16,000. So it’s worth taking the time to ask the dealer for relevant information. Drive Clean Colorado has a handy checklist of questions: “Has the battery ever been serviced or replaced?” “What’s the remaining battery warranty?” “Is the warranty transferable to a second owner?”
Be sure to ask for a copy of the battery’s health report, which includes a “State of Health” metric that clarifies loss of capacity. For example, a score of 95% means that if the original range was 300 miles, it’s now 285 miles.
Warranties usually cover the battery and drive train for at least eight years or 100,000 miles. Verify in the contract what’s covered for the car you’re eyeing.
Vehicles that are 2 years to 4 years old are an especially good bet, according to Ingrid Malmgren, senior policy director at EV advocacy nonprofit Plug In America. “Those are the vehicles that are going to be coming off of leases. They tend to be lower mileage [and] have lots of remaining life left in them.”
EVs can last 150,000 miles to more than 300,000 miles; and the batteries, losing on average about 2% of their original mileage annually, have a typical lifespan of about 13 years. And the technology keeps improving.
“Mileage has less of an impact than battery health on longevity,” Malmgren said. “So if you wouldn’t buy a gas car with 100,000 miles, an EV with good battery health still could have hundreds of thousands of miles left, because [it has] fewer moving parts.”
Check the EV charging port. Older vehicles might have a J1772 port, which is compatible only with Level 1 and Level 2 chargers, instead of a CCS or NACS port that can accommodate direct-current fast-charging, too. DC fast charging can be 10 times as quick as Level 2 charging.
If you’re planning to plug in at home, you might want to install a Level 2 charger before you drive the car off the lot. Some of the best-reviewed options retail for about $200 to $900. A 120-volt outlet will provide a trickle of about 2 miles to 5 miles of charge per hour, depending on the vehicle.
Each EV make and model will also have its own max charging speed, which could influence how you road-trip. An old Chevy Bolt that taps out at 50 kilowatts will take more than an hour to fully recharge even at the fastest charger, whereas the newer model could do that in less than 20 minutes.
Bright, whose Leaf gets a max of about 68 miles of range, would love to go farther. So now she’s saving up for her next EV: a 2025 Nissan Leaf with 149 miles on a full charge. Bright plans to shop used because it’s so much more affordable; she has seen prices for secondhand models around $18,000, deeply discounted from the roughly $30,000 sticker price of a new one.
Bright’s bank account steadily grew after she switched to a used EV. “I felt so much relief,” she said. “I recommend it for anybody [who’s] struggling.”
European drivers are escaping high gas prices and buying more cheap Chinese EVs. In the U.S., that’s impossible.
This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday.
As the war in Iran spikes gasoline prices around the globe, drivers in many countries have headed for an obvious emergency exit: EVs. But buyers in the U.S. aren’t following suit, and a lack of affordable EV options is a big reason why.
While global EV sales plunged in January and February from 2025’s record heights, they rebounded in March and April, according to data out this week from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. That’s largely thanks to a surge in Europe, where EV sales were 27% higher this April than the same month last year. Rising gasoline prices fueled the region’s market, BMI says, as did the increasing availability of cheap Chinese EV imports.
The latter is exactly what the U.S. lacks. While used EVs are now cost-competitive with used gas cars, that’s not the case for new models. The cheapest new EV sold in the U.S., the Nissan Leaf, starts at just under $30,000. But in China, dozens of EVs retail for around $25,000 or less, including several models from BYD, which surpassed Tesla as the world’s top EV seller earlier this year. And while the Asian superpower has ramped up exports to Europe, Latin America, and, more recently, Canada, its cars face a 100% tariff and national security rules in the U.S. that make them impossible to sell.
It’s not that U.S. drivers aren’t interested in electrifying their ride. Shopping sites Cars.com and CarGurus both say searches for EVs have jumped since the Iran war began. And a February survey from Cox Automotive found nearly half of Americans considering an EV would pick the Chinese-made Geely Xingyuan over a Tesla Model Y, while 38% would select BYD’s Seagull over the Tesla.
But letting Chinese EVs into the U.S. is a scary prospect for domestic automakers. The American EV sector is only just finding its sea legs, having been knocked back time and time again by tariffs, politics, and the federal tax credit rollback. It’s probably not reassuring that President Donald Trump has said he’s open to Chinese investment in the U.S., provided companies use American labor — and that Trump’s meetings this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping similarly indicated a softening in relations.
“[U.S. automakers are] absolutely more than worried — they’re scared stiff,” Michael Dunne, chief executive officer of automotive consultancy Dunne Insights, told Politico. “Imagine if the Chinese come in with a $25,000 EV. That could catch like wildfire.”
For now, though, BYD in the USA remains miles down the road — if it’s a destination we ever reach at all.
On wind and solar, Interior won’t go down without a fight
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Wednesday affirmed that the Trump administration will appeal a ruling that struck down Interior Department policies stymieing wind and solar permitting.
Last month, a federal judge ordered the administration to stop enforcing five actions that effectively blocked all wind and solar energy permitting on public land, including a policy that required Burgum to personally sign off on projects that need federal permissions. The blockade was “arbitrary and capricious,” the judge said, especially considering permitting for fossil fuel companies marched on as usual.
Congress has been trying for years to enact bipartisan legislation to reform energy permitting, but Trump’s anti-renewables crusade has led Democrats to repeatedly back out. This appeal is likely to derail reform attempts once again, as two senators said last month they’d cooperate only if the Interior Department lets solar and wind projects keep rolling.
Geothermal innovation keeps heating up
This week marked a milestone for the geothermal industry — a potentially key piece of the push to secure clean, 24/7 power.
On Wednesday, Fervo Energy became the first next-generation geothermal company to go public, bringing in $1.9 billion from its IPO and securing a valuation of about $7.7 billion, Canary Media’s Dan McCarthy reports. While traditional geothermal energy production has been limited to certain geologic areas, like volcanic regions, Fervo is borrowing drilling techniques from the fossil fuel industry to access deep-down heat in more locations.
Another thing geothermal may be able to borrow from oil and gas drillers? Their abandoned wells. The U.S. is littered with these sites, many of which have no clear owner and are polluting the air and groundwater, Canary’s Maria Gallucci reports. A growing number of both Republican- and Democratic-led states are exploring whether these wells could be repurposed for geothermal energy production — a complicated task with huge potential upside.
Fossil fuels all the way down: In rural Jasper County, Indiana, residents are fighting to shut down a 50-year-old coal plant running past its prime, while also staring down another polluting prospect: a new gas plant to power a data center. (Canary Media)
Tapping the brakes: President Donald Trump says he supports suspending the federal gas tax, though even Republicans in Congress are reluctant to move on his call to action. (Politico)
Clean power climbs: A new dashboard that tracks national and state-level progress on deploying clean energy finds that the U.S. produced nearly three times as much solar, wind, and geothermal power in 2025 as it did in 2016. (Environment America, news release)
Generating controversy: Elon Musk–led company xAI has installed dozens of “temporary-mobile” gas turbines in Mississippi to power its data centers, which remain exempt from state oversight even as neighboring residents push back over pollution and noise concerns. (Mississippi Today)
Inside offshore wind communities: After months spent interviewing residents in three offshore wind hubs in Connecticut, Maryland, and Massachusetts, researchers find that communities are excited by the projects’ economic promise but are unsure it’ll last once construction is finished. (NBC Connecticut)
Georgia’s nuclear warning: Utility customers are still paying the cost of Georgia Power’s addition of nuclear reactors to Plant Vogtle, which ran seven years behind schedule and more than two and a half times over budget, providing a cautionary tale for advocates of the energy source. (Inside Climate News)
Mercury rising: Coal power plants released 9% more mercury in 2025 than they did a year earlier — a number that will likely grow as the Trump administration looks to expand coal power generation and loosen regulations that could curb the toxic pollutant. (New York Times)
Thanks to state incentives, the long-range, lower-cost electric trucks are affordable. Widespread adoption could help California meet clean-trucking targets.
Back in 2017, Tesla promised to bring an all-electric semitruck to market that would have a longer range and lower cost than its competitors. Then, the trucking industry waited — and waited. The initial production target of 2019 came and went, as did each newly announced date over the next three years.
But in 2022, Tesla finally unveiled its Tesla Semi and started to get pilot versions on the road for testing. The Class 8 battery-electric truck hit performance targets well beyond what Daimler, Volvo, Kenworth, Peterbilt, and other companies were delivering with their all-electric models. As of April 29, Tesla says it has finally started high-volume Semi production at its factory in Sparks, Nevada.
Now, the Semi’s combination of mileage and price appears set to transform an industry hungry for an affordable way to move freight without burning diesel — especially in California, the country’s top market for electric trucks.
So says Ray Minjares, heavy-duty vehicles program director at the International Council on Clean Transportation. The nonprofit research group has been tracking applications from truck purchasers seeking vouchers under California’s Hybrid and Zero-Emission Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project (HVIP), the country’s biggest state-administered program to incentivize the shift to heavy-duty clean vehicles.
Of the 1,067 requests for vouchers submitted during the latest application window, which launched in December 2025, 965 were for Tesla Semis, he said. That’s far more applications than for any other model of truck, he added — and more than the total number of HVIP applications for all heavy-duty trucks since 2021.
And if all those Tesla Semis are actually delivered by the end of this year, that could make up about a third of heavy-duty truck sales in the state, Minjares said. That’s far above the 10% target for zero-emissions Class 8 vehicles set under California’s Advanced Clean Trucks regulation, he noted.
This would be an important environmental accomplishment. Heavy-duty trucks emit more than half the transportation sector’s harmful air pollution, with disproportionate health impacts for lower-income areas and communities of color.
It would be even more striking given that the Republicans in Congress passed legislation last year nullifying California’s power to set its own emissions reduction standards for trucks and cars under the federal Clean Air Act, he said. The Trump administration has also moved to weaken national fuel economy standards and claw back federal funds for electric trucks and EV charging.
Considering the policy headwinds, “states that have severe air quality challenges and climate goals need to find alternative pathways to enable this transition,” Minjares said. And one of the most important ways to do that is “putting downward pressure on the price that fleets are paying for the vehicles.”
The median price for a Tesla Semi capable of driving about 500 miles on a single charge is just under $300,000, according to HVIP data. That’s about $138,000 to $224,000 less than competing Class 8 battery-electric vehicles with roughly half the range, he said.
And while Tesla has tested the patience of buyers with its delays, the early models it put on the road got high marks from trucking companies and drivers.
In 2023, during three weeks of test-drives hosted by the nonprofit research group North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE), Tesla Semis that beverage giant PepsiCo tried out hit 384 miles on a single charge. One truck traveled 1,076 miles in a single 24-hour period with multiple partial recharges using Tesla’s 750-kilowatt Supercharger. In another NACFE test-drive in 2025, a Tesla Semi operated by freight company Saia consistently traveled 465 miles on a single charge while operating two shifts per day, said Mike Roeth, NACFE’s executive director.
As of today, Tesla has boosted the range of its Semi to up to 350 miles for the standard model and up to 500 miles for the long-range model. It has also launched its Megacharger, capable of delivering up to 1.2 megawatts of power — enough to replenish about 60% of a Semi battery in 30 minutes — available both for truck depots and at an expanding set of public charging sites.
“The Tesla Semi is twice the range, and half the charging time, of trucks from traditional manufacturers,” Roeth said. “And early data is showing it’s a third less expensive to purchase.”
These are all appealing characteristics to Jennie Abarca, founder and CEO of King Fio Trucking in Long Beach, California. She already has 11 electric trucks in her 35-truck fleet serving the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, including models from Volvo, a major manufacturer, and Nikola, a startup that went bankrupt last year.
“Both trucks have been exceptional,” she said. “But now you have something like the Tesla coming in: 500-mile range, 30-minute recharge, and $150,000 less than the current option out there — wow.”
Abarca has applied to secure HVIP vouchers for 20 Tesla Semis, with each voucher providing a $120,000 discount to the up-front cost of a truck. Additional incentives available from the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles and from utility Southern California Edison for drayage trucks, which carry cargo from ports to inland warehouses, can further reduce that cost by up to 90%.
Buyers must still pay sales and excise taxes on the full sticker price of the vehicle and cover registration fees. But with the full stack of incentives, the cost of a Tesla Semi “will look more like a really nice used diesel [truck], which is what I would normally buy,” Abarca said.
And once it’s on the road, an electric truck is less expensive to fuel and maintain, she said. These operating advantages, along with lowered electric drivetrain and battery costs, are expected to bring electric trucks into parity with diesel vehicles in terms of total cost of ownership within the next five to 10 years, according to research from the International Council on Clean Transportation, NACFE, and other groups.
To be clear, “I can’t buy these trucks without incentives,” Abarca said. “The trucking industry has been in a hole since the end of 2022” due to the supply chain disruptions and inflationary pressures of the Covid pandemic, she said. “And I don’t have investors. I only have the profits I make from my business.”
Rudy Diaz, owner of Long Beach–based trucking firm Hight Logistics, also said he wouldn’t have been able to buy the 25 electric trucks in his 75-vehicle fleet without incentives.
But he believes that electric vehicles are the future of the industry — if they can come down in price and weight and their range can be increased between charges. That’s why he’s applied for HVIP vouchers for 15 Tesla Semis and plans to install several Megachargers at his Long Beach depot.
The Volvo and BYD trucks he now operates are capable of making it from ports to the complex of distribution warehouses in the Inland Empire region of Southern California and back on a single charge, “and not necessarily run out of battery,” he said. “But to do that, you’re going to have to have downtime for charging.”
With the Tesla Semi’s 500 miles of range, he notes, “I can go to San Diego and back. I can be competitive with diesel in other areas where I couldn’t compete before.”
Such flexibility is what could make the Tesla Semi launch “the kind of thing that truly catalyzes change,” said John Verdon, co-founder and chief commercial officer of Nevoya, a startup that owns and deploys electric trucks carrying freight in California, Arizona, and Texas for large corporations and third-party logistics operators.
Nevoya has been operating five preproduction Tesla Semis in California as part of its fleet of about 50 electric trucks, Verdon said. Most of the company’s routes are between the ports of LA and Long Beach and the Inland Empire. But its Tesla trucks are able to make longer runs from Southern California to the Central Valley and San Francisco Bay Area, he said.
Extended range isn’t just about longer hauls, though, he said — it’s about getting the most value out of vehicles whose higher up-front costs can be more than counterbalanced by lower operating costs, as long as they’re being used as often as possible. “We’re no longer bound by the notion that we have a vehicle that’s superexpensive, has limited range, and inadequate spots for them to charge.”
It’s too soon to tell how the Tesla Semi might push its competitors to improve the range or pricing of their electric trucks. But as Minjares noted, legacy truck manufacturers face a structural challenge in competing against their all-electric rival, with relatively low volumes of electric vehicles being built on production lines designed to support both internal combustion and battery-electric models.
“Legacy manufacturers are stuck between multiple technologies, weighing them down with development and production costs,” he said. “But Tesla has bet on one technology, giving the company greater focus and discipline.”
Whether the trucking industry has the buying appetite to make that bet pay off is another question. Roeth noted that Tesla has stated its Nevada factory is capable of producing about 50,000 Semis per year. For context, there are only about 2,000 electric heavy-duty trucks on U.S. roads today, according to International Council on Clean Transportation data. In fact, 50,000 vehicles would constitute roughly a quarter of the total annual U.S. market for heavy-duty diesel-fueled trucks.
“Tesla has two things it has to do: Convince customers to buy electric, and convince customers to buy its electric,” Roeth said.
While the Tesla Semi has already established its clear performance and price advantages, it has yet to demonstrate the “reliability and durability” of its technology “at 500,000 miles, at 750,000 miles, at 1 million miles,” he said.
Tesla won’t hit its full Semi production capacity right away, according to Minjares. It’s also likely to seek out markets outside the U.S. It will face tough competition from leading Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers that now dominate the industry, as well as new entrants like Windrose, which last month sold its first electric truck in the U.S. at a price comparable to the Tesla Semi’s.
But Minjares believes these kinds of competitive pressures are what’s needed to make other manufacturers stop fighting state clean-trucking policies and start embracing innovation.
“This transition was never going to be sustainable if the underlying economics were not favorable,” he said. “The challenge on the policy side has brought that into clearer focus.”
When it comes to electric vehicles, old is gold.
In the U.S., sales of new EVs are slumping — but more used EVs are being driven off the lot than ever, per Cox Automotive data. With hundreds of thousands of battery-powered vehicles coming off leases soon, the used EV market is set to accelerate even further in the years to come.
Made with Flourish • Create a chart
Although Americans still buy a lot more new EVs than used ones, the Cox data shows the gap beginning to close: Used EV sales jumped by 34% in 2025, compared with the prior year, as new EV sales shrank a bit. Overall, electric models made up nearly a tenth of new vehicle sales in the U.S. in 2025, and about 2% of used car sales.
A combination of factors explains why used EVs are on the upswing while new ones are stagnant.
For one, a lot more used EVs are on the market these days than in the past. About 300,000 EVs will come off of leases this year, up from 123,000 last year, and Cox expects another 600,000 to do so in 2027. Not all of those will hit the used car market, but many will, providing a rush of inventory that helps drive down prices.
Speaking of prices, on average a used EV is now basically at price parity with a used gas car. That’s a big deal: Up-front cost is one of the main barriers preventing people from buying battery-powered vehicles, which are typically cheaper to drive and maintain but have long been more expensive than similar gas-fueled models.
A new EV is still about $6,500 more than a new gas car, on average. Consumers used to be able to shave $7,500 off the EV price with a federal tax credit, but the Trump administration did away with that incentive in September.
The rise of used EVs is a rare positive signal for the American vehicle-electrification effort.
While new EV sales hit record highs under the pro-EV Biden administration, adoption was slower than expected, causing some automakers to walk back commitments to churn out electric models. When President Donald Trump took office last year and tossed out the tax credit along with a bunch of other supportive regulations, it added fuel to the fire.
Some analysts expect EV sales to surge as fallout from the war in the Middle East spikes oil and gas prices worldwide. In the U.S., the average cost of a gallon of gas is now well over $4 a gallon — and climbing — and in some countries, fuel shortages have spurred driving bans and fuel rationing. So far, the early evidence suggests that those expecting an EV boom are on to something.
As of January, California requires developers of new multifamily buildings to ensure that residents with parking have access to EV charging at home. It’s one of the most equitable EV-charging policies in the nation, according to climate advocates.
But in a bid to reduce costs for builders, a state lawmaker introduced a bill in February that would waive those requirements for affordable housing construction until at least 2036.
Most households don’t have EVs yet, but the vehicles are growing in popularity, their costs are falling, and local rebates are making them more affordable. Clean-driving proponents say the current state policy, which requires outlets for EVs to plug into, is crucial to ensure that residents of affordable housing units can easily transition to electric cars and reap the benefits.
“California shouldn’t drop back,” said Linda Hutchins-Knowles, co-leader of the nonprofit National Charging Access Coalition. “We have the most expensive cost of living in the country. We need to reduce costs for residents of apartments and condos, especially in affordable housing, by giving them access to the lowest-cost charging for the lowest-cost vehicles, which are used EVs.”
In California, where gas is nearly $6 a gallon, EVs are taking off. They made up nearly one-fifth of new cars sold in the last quarter of 2025. Even given the state’s high electricity prices, EVs can cut the cost of driving in half. And drivers benefit most when they can charge at home: It’s both more convenient and cheaper than using public chargers.
Now, affordable housing developers must install one EV-charging outlet per residence with parking that can provide low-power Level 2 EV charging (20 amps, 240 volts). These outlets deliver a charging speed that’s in between what you’d get from a full Level 2 charging outlet (40 amps, 240 volts) and a standard 120-volt outlet.
Assembly Bill 2748, sponsored by Democratic Assembly Member Sharon Quirk-Silva, would instead allow developers to follow the weaker 2022 building code, which doesn’t require any EV-charging infrastructure for up to 60% of parking spaces. Quirk-Silva did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the bill, which will be heard in committee on April 22.
The state has required new single-family homes, duplexes, and town houses to be built with an outlet for EV charging since the 2016 code. The latest code update “finally extended that courtesy to people who live in apartments,” said Sean Armstrong, managing principal of Redwood Energy, a design firm specializing in net-zero, all-electric affordable housing development.
If passed, AB 2748 could affect millions of Californians who move into affordable housing units constructed in the next decade. By 2030 alone, the state aims to build an additional 1 million units for low-income households.
The California Council for Affordable Housing, an industry trade group that supports waiving the EV-charging requirement, says the bill is necessary to ease economic pressure on developers. “Without this exemption, affordable housing projects, already operating within razor‑thin financial margins, would face substantial and unnecessary cost burdens,” the group wrote in a Feb. 25 post.
The EV-charging requirement does increase project costs — by about $1,000 to $2,500 per unit, said Armstrong, who has consulted on hundreds of housing projects. But these expenses add just 0.2% to 0.5% to the total project cost, he noted.
Adding EV-charging outlets after construction is challenging, as it requires digging up concrete, trenching, laying down conduit, and other changes, Hutchins-Knowles said. Plus, retrofits can be several times the cost of up-front installations, according to Peninsula Clean Energy, a public power agency in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The new bill is the latest example of the brewing tension between California’s pro-electrification building standards and its efforts to ease the housing crisis.
Last June, lawmakers passed a housing reform law meant to spur supply. As part of that policy, the state will skip the 2028 building code cycle, ceding the chance to push developers further toward fossil fuel–free buildings. Some legislators said the move would make housing more affordable. But climate advocates said there’s little evidence to back up that claim.
Debate over what services to install in low-income buildings stretches back even further.
Until the mid-1900s, building developers across the country often constructed housing without complete plumbing, including running hot water. People living in these cold-water flats had to heat water on wood- and coal-burning stoves for bathing, cooking, and cleaning. But cities and states eventually decided that hot water was a basic necessity, not a luxury only wealthier homes should have.
“It was a deep inequity that was fixed by building codes,” Hutchins-Knowles said. “No one argues that to make affordable housing less expensive, we should exempt them from providing hot water.”
“Everyone deserves charging at their house,” said Marc Geller, board member of EV-advocacy organization Plug In America.
Hutchins-Knowles predicts that higher gas prices will drive a surge of interest in EVs. As in the past, legislators need to take the long view for low-income renters, she said. “We shouldn’t block out the people who can least afford to pay more for transportation.”
Chad Shepard has warm feelings about the all-electric Honda Prologue he bought recently. Unlike his first EV, a BMW i3, the SUV is big enough for his two teenage sons and his 80-pound sheepdog. Its 300-mile range is plenty to get him to the homes across the San Francisco Bay Area that he appraises for a living.
And while he hasn’t done the math since he bought it last autumn, he’s pretty certain that he’s saving money on fuel, compared with when he was driving a gas-powered car.
But perhaps the best thing about his new EV is the price he paid: $30,000, well below the sticker price for a new model. “And because it was only a year old, I still had a full 100,000-mile warranty,” he said, which included coverage for its most valuable component — the battery.
Across the U.S., people like Shepard are finding that used EVs are more attractively priced than ever — and are snapping the cars up as a result. It’s a welcome development in what has otherwise been a tough year for an industry that’s key to combatting climate change.
With the oil shock created by the war in Iran, used EVs are likely to become even more attractive to shoppers. Nationally, gas prices have surged to over $4 per gallon on average; in California, the country’s EV capital, they’re nearing $6. Unlike new EVs, used versions have mostly reached priced parity with gas-powered cars, according to new data from Cox Automotive — making the preowned versions the cheapest way for people to ditch increasingly costly-to-fuel gas cars in the near term.
“Affordability is top of mind among Americans, particularly given gas prices today,” said Maximilian Quertermous, co-founder and chief operating officer of Ever, an automotive retail startup focused on electric vehicles. “It’s a great time to buy a used EV overall.”
Used EV sales are climbing even as new EVs sales plummet nationwide.
New EV sales dropped by 28% year over year in the first quarter of 2026, per Cox. That was primarily driven by the loss of federal tax credits under the megabill passed by Republicans in Congress last year.
By contrast, used EV sales increased by 12% over the same period. The reason? Declining prices. The average cost of a used EV is now within about $1,300 of a comparable gas vehicle, Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights at Cox Automotive, said during a March forecast call. “That affordability shift has clearly shown up in the data,” she said, “significantly expanding access for mainstream buyers.”
In the U.S., new EVs still outsell used ones. That’s likely to change as the market matures, since the overall used car market is roughly three times as large as the new car market. Right now, EVs make up only about 2% of the used car market, but that share is growing, according to Cox data.
“The trajectory is what stands out,” Valdez Streaty said, “supported by a broader mix of models, more affordable prices, and a significant wave of off-lease EVs.”
These latest data points aren’t coming out of left field, said Scott Case, CEO of Recurrent, a data-science firm specializing in collecting information on used EVs. His company tracked a 35% increase in used EV sales from 2024 to 2025, as well as a consistent downward trend in pricing, with 56% of used EVs selling for $30,000 or less as of January.
“What is different about 2026 is that for the first time ever, there’s actually a big enough used electrical vehicle market,” he said.
In particular, a lot of those used EVs are coming off leases made popular by a “leasing loophole” that allowed automakers and dealers to offer a full $7,500 federal tax credit, without the income qualification and manufacturer restrictions that applied to claiming the credit on direct sales.
More than 1.1 million EVs were leased from January 2023 to September 2025, when the federal tax credit ended. Shepard said he kept a close eye on those trends when planning to buy a bigger EV. “If you track that, you’ll see that [the cars] all go back to the dealer at the same time,” he said. “They have a flood of them, and the price drops a lot.”
And the latest vintages of used EVs offer an impressive value when compared with their gas-powered equivalents, Case said. Recurrent’s latest data indicates that a used EV is a year newer and has nearly 30,000 fewer miles than a similarly priced used gas car.
“When you compare what you’re getting for each of those, this is not an apples to apples — it’s a crappy apple versus a really awesome apple,” he said.
At least 68% of used EVs that Recurrent is tracking are 2022 models or later, which offer newer technology features than the average 6.5-year-old used internal combustion engine vehicle, Case added. Almost all those newer EVs remain under battery and powertrain warranties that tend to offer eight years or 100,000 miles of coverage, he said — and that’s for a class of vehicle that already costs about 40% less to maintain than a conventional car.
If they’re so much better, why are used EVs so cheap? Case outlined several key factors to explain that.
First is the far more rapid pace of improvements from one model year to the next — “more range, faster charging, more technology” — that make newer EVs more valuable than their predecessors. EVs that are even a few years old are seen as less desirable than the latest models, and thus command a lower price, he said. Federal tax credits also pushed down the expectations of what EV should cost, he said.
But many people remain uncertain about buying an EV, Case said. Range anxiety remains one of the chief concerns, he noted. And for used EVs, there’s another layer of uncertainty around “how the battery is holding up.”
Recurrent hopes its research can help disabuse EV buyers of that uncertainty, he said. The company has collected data from more than 50,000 EVs on the road, with more than a billion miles driven. While there’s variability between different manufacturers and EV models, that data shows that used EV batteries are holding up better than expected, he said. That finding is backed by other studies indicating that EV batteries are lasting longer than people thought they would.
These are important factors for low-income customers looking to EVs to cushion themselves from rising fuel costs, said Jason Zimbler, senior director of light-duty vehicles at clean-transportation nonprofit Calstart. “You’re getting a younger car, less road wear, and the battery degradation has been minimal,” he said. “So you’re not putting lemons in the hands of the secondary market.”
And while last year’s Republican-passed megabill killed a $4,000 tax credit for used EVs, along with the bigger rebate for new ones, many buyers can still access state or utility rebates, said Peter Glenn, co-CEO of EV Life, a startup with software used by customers, car dealers, and automakers to find EV incentives.
California’s biggest utilities offer rebates ranging from $1,000 to over $4,000 for income-qualified customers. States including Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, and Rhode Island provide rebates in the thousands of dollars range, he said.
Understanding all the price reductions available up front can push used EVs past price parity with gas-powered cars and into the “tipping point” of being cheaper, Glenn said. “You almost need it to tip into obvious savings beyond, so it becomes a total no-brainer.”
Of course, buyers focused on long-term ownership costs can also use a variety of calculators available online that demonstrate how much cheaper it is to fuel and maintain EVs over time, Glenn added. “If you’re charging at home, it can be the equivalent of paying about $1 to $2 per gallon, even in higher-electricity-cost markets.”
Shepard only recently installed a Level 2 charger at home, so he hasn’t had a chance to calculate his fueling savings yet. But he’s glad he doesn’t have to rely on gasoline anymore.
“I just don’t see any need to use fossil fuels to make our cars go when it works just as well with electricity,” he said.
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
In the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Congress voted to invest $5 billion in accelerating a phaseout of diesel school buses across the country, a move meant to protect students from harmful pollution and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
But the Clean School Bus program has been on hold since President Donald Trump took office, with $2.3 billion still unspent.
Last Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced what it called a “revamp” of the program, signaling it would no longer favor electric school buses, where 95 percent of the money had been spent under President Joe Biden. Instead, the Trump administration is seeking to move to “a broad range of options,” including buses fueled by natural gas, biofuel, or hydrogen.
Such a shift could lock grant recipients into investments in school buses that generate significant climate pollution for years, but EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said it is designed to provide school districts with increased choice and more affordable options.
“The Clean School Bus program has been a disaster of poor management and wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars,” Zeldin said in a statement. “Today, EPA takes the next step to set the program straight. Americans can rest assured that moving forward, the program will be safe, effective, and use reliable forms of American energy.”
In announcing the changes, the EPA noted that the law has always allowed for a wider range of fuel options than electric school buses. Indeed, the law specifies that money can be used for “alternative fuel” vehicles, defined as “liquefied natural gas, compressed natural gas, hydrogen, propane, or biofuels,” as long as the EPA administrator certifies it will reduce emissions.
But the law does contain a provision requiring that at least 50 percent of the Clean School Bus funding be allocated each fiscal year for “zero-emission school buses.” In the U.S. market, experts say that means battery-electric buses.
“It appears that EPA may be trying to stretch the definition of ‘clean’ school buses to include more buses that run on highly polluting fossil fuels,” said Melody Reis, federal policy director at the advocacy group Moms Clean Air Task Force, in an email. “But the agency is still required to award at least 50 percent of funds to electric school buses.”
The EPA announcement was critical of electric buses, asserting that under Biden, the Clean School Bus program “forced unsafe and unreliable electric buses onto American schools.” It cited the example of Quebec’s Lion Electric, which filed for bankruptcy in 2024 after selling a reported 3,400 buses in the United States. The company’s new investors announced last year that they would not honor warranties on those vehicles.
But other bus companies with electric school bus lines have expressed a continued commitment to the market over the past year, including Blue Bird Corp., headquartered in Macon, Georgia, and Thomas Built Buses, a subsidiary of Daimler Truck North America LLC, which manufactures its vehicles in High Point, North Carolina.
Critics of the Trump administration see the planned changes to the Clean School Bus program as in line with its other moves to halt the U.S. transition away from fossil fuels, especially the EPA’s repeal of the endangerment finding on greenhouse gas emissions one week earlier.
“Once again, EPA is clearly demonstrating that it plans to fund fossil fuels and prioritize polluting corporate interests over our children’s health and our future,” said Katherine García, director of the Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All program, in an email. “Considering we have the funding, technology, and charging infrastructure to deploy electric school buses, no child should have to inhale carcinogenic pollution each day on their way to school. Sacrificing young lungs and futures to prop up corporate polluters is indefensible.”
The majority of the nation’s 500,000 school buses are diesel-powered, and an EPA study released just prior to passage of the infrastructure law estimated that 40 percent of the fleet had been in circulation for more than 11 years. Unlike many other diesel vehicles — trucks that haul loads on highways or tractors that plow farm fields — diesel school buses traverse residential areas daily, exposing residents to high levels of particulate matter and other pollutants. Studies have shown a significant reduction in respiratory illness when school bus diesel emissions are eliminated.
But switching to electric buses has been a difficult decision to make for chronically cash-strapped public school systems. A 2024 report in Resources for the Future’s magazine put the average price of an electric school bus at $352,000, or three and a half times the price of diesel buses, which typically cost less than $100,000. Although electric buses have lower maintenance and fueling costs for school districts, those savings typically have not been enough to offset the higher up-front cost of electric school buses unless they are subsidized.
The Clean School Bus program was meant to help school districts overcome the cost hurdle. And by increasing the number of electric buses purchased, the program was designed to drive the kind of investment in manufacturing facilities and supply chains that would lower the cost of the zero-emission vehicles over time.
The revamped Clean School Bus program Zeldin outlined would be far less ambitious. It still could reduce local air pollution significantly, depending on what type of buses districts purchase. But it is likely to offer only modest reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and would not aim for the kind of industrial transformation the Biden plan was seeking.
For example, switching to natural gas buses instead of electric would mean lower up-front cost for school districts (and less need for federal subsidy money); they sell for $25,000 to $50,000 more than diesel buses, according to federal studies. Districts would have to invest in fueling stations, as they would need to set up charging stations for electric buses. The cost of fueling with compressed natural gas is currently 20 percent less than diesel. School districts also could reduce local pollution with natural gas buses, which generate up to 90 percent less particulate matter than diesel. Smog-forming NOx pollution could be 50 to 90 percent lower if the buses are equipped with low-NOx engines. But carbon emissions would only be up to 20 percent less than the greenhouse gas pollution from diesel buses.
Electric buses generate less than half the carbon emissions of natural gas buses, according to an analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists that took into account climate pollution from the electricity needed to charge the buses. In some parts of the United States, where the electric grid is cleaner, the climate advantages of electric buses are even greater — about 85 percent less carbon emissions than natural gas buses in upstate New York, where the grid relies heavily on hydropower, nuclear power, and wind energy.
Because buses are a large capital spending item for school districts, the carbon emissions of newly purchased natural gas bus fleets will be locked in for years, with the help of subsidies from the Clean School Bus program.
“Ultimately, this means more pollution in the air our children breathe,” Reis said.
Under the Biden administration, the Clean School Bus program funded replacement of 8,900 school buses in 1,300 school districts, 95 percent of them zero-emission battery-electric vehicles. The Biden administration made $965 million available when the most recent round of funding opened in fall 2024, doubling the offering of the previous year, when applications far surpassed the money available. Applications closed just before Trump took office in January 2025.
As part of its announcement on retooling the program, the Trump EPA said it would not be awarding any funds under that round. “EPA thanks applicants for their interest and encourages them to apply for the new grant program,” the EPA announcement said.
Reis said the months of limbo have been difficult for school districts and have delayed action on health harms for the 25 million students who ride school buses.
“Demand for clean school buses has been high, and hundreds, if not thousands, of school districts waited for over a year only to recently discover their applications would not be honored,” Reis said. “I can imagine they’re feeling disappointed and distrustful of the current EPA. It also means that thousands of kids who could have been riding electric school buses this school year are still riding the older, polluting buses that are harming our health and the environment.”
Ground zero for the impact of Zeldin’s changes to the Clean School Bus program will be his home state of New York, where Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul is spearheading implementation of one of the nation’s first electric school bus mandates. Hochul defeated Zeldin when she sought reelection in 2022. The Legislature approved the mandate, proposed by Hochul, as part of the state budget earlier that year.
If EPA awards fewer Clean School Bus program grants for electric buses, that will mean less support for New York school districts, which are supposed to purchase only zero-emission buses by 2027. Prior to Trump’s return to the White House, 45 school districts in New York state, including New York City, received more than $210 million in grants and rebates from EPA’s Clean School Bus program for the purchase of 653 electric school buses, said a spokesperson for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which is administering the transition to electric school buses. About two-thirds of the state’s 730 school districts are participating in electrification plans, according to NYSERDA.
The aim of New York’s program is to transition the state’s entire school bus fleet to electric vehicles by 2035. New York has the nation’s largest school bus fleet, with nearly 50,000 vehicles, or 10 percent of the nationwide fleet. Six other states — California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, and Washington — also passed electric school bus mandates in the wake of the 2021 infrastructure law. Other states have pilot programs, like Illinois’ effort to test use of electric school bus charging to help increase stability of the grid. All stand to get less federal support than anticipated for that transition with the planned changes to the EPA program.
Hochul has made $500 million available for the state’s electric school bus transition from New York’s $4.2 billion Clean Water, Clean Air, and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act, enacted at the time of the mandate. “This program can bring the cost of an electric bus close to parity with a diesel bus and can cover up to 100 percent of the cost of charging stations,” a NYSERDA spokesperson said. In addition, the New York Legislature’s 2025–2026 budget included an additional $100 million for zero-emission transportation, including school buses and supporting infrastructure.
But some New York public school leaders have chafed at the state’s mandate and the New York State School Boards Association has called for lawmakers to repeal or significantly alter it — or have the state cover the full cost of the transition. The school boards association has said the anticipated increase in funding from the state falls short of the anticipated increase in costs.
“School board members recognize the perilous effects of a changing climate on students,” the association said in a position paper. “However, they must ensure that the decisions they make on behalf of their communities are financially and operationally sustainable. Unfortunately, as it is currently construed, and because of factors that have changed since its inception, the zero-emission school bus transition for too many districts is neither.”
One of the factors that have changed is the withdrawal of federal support for the transition to EVs under Trump.
As a first step toward implementing its revamped Clean School Bus program, the EPA is opening a 45-day public comment period in order “to seek feedback from fleet operators, manufacturers, school officials, and energy producers on a broad range of fuel options that school bus sectors could use,” the EPA said.
.svg)
