Clemson, SC purchases 10 Proterra electric buses
07 September 2017
Clemson Area Transit (CATbus) has purchased ten 40' Proterra Catalyst E2 buses and related charging infrastructure. The CATbus transit vehicles will be manufactured in Proterra’s East Coast Manufacturing Facility, located in nearby Greenville, S.C.
Serving 1.9 million riders annually in three Upstate South Carolina counties, including the cities of Clemson and Seneca and the towns of Central and Pendleton as well as four universities, the fare-free CATbus system will have the largest zero-emission fleet in the Carolinas.
CATbus purchased the Proterra Catalyst E2 buses in part with $3.9 million from the Federal Highway and Transit Administration’s (FTA) Low- or No-Emissions program. The Low-No program provided $55 million in bus-buying grants to municipalities in 2016, of which Clemson’s grant was among the largest.
The ten-bus purchase complements the six Proterra buses already servicing the City of Seneca, S.C. that are operated by CATbus. In 2015, Seneca became the first city in the US to operate an all-electric bus fleet.
Since the fleet made its debut, the Seneca Proterra buses have received 27,950 charges, traveled more than 520,000 miles and eliminated over 2,848,600 lbs (1.3 metric tonnes) of greenhouse gases.
Is this a 'feel good' e-bus order or a plan to replace the 1,000,000 + diesel buses in USA?
In China, large polluted cities are each ordering 1,000 e-buses.
Do we have a similar relationship with ultra high speed rails?
Posted by: HarveyD | 07 September 2017 at 01:43 PM
Harvey:
Clemson is a small city in South Carolina(16,000) noted for a University by the same name; their transit system is fare free from State/Federal/University grants and carries mostly students from town to the campus. The Proterra plant is located nearby in Greenville as is Seneca(the all electric bus city with six electric buses)...we are talking small here...so why not buy local and keep the workers working and the air clean?
Posted by: Lad | 07 September 2017 at 04:36 PM
Nothing wrong with buying local, specially e-buses and batteries/FCs.
Will more large US/Canada cities soon do as well (proportionally) to Clemson and many Californian, EU and Chinese cities and place orders for 1,000+ electrified buses each?
Posted by: HarveyD | 08 September 2017 at 12:03 PM