The overall assessment: It’s a good idea, but the technology just isn’t there yet.
“I think the message here is, as school leaders in this room we want to try,” said John Luthringer, Lake George Central School District superintendent, “The 50,000 foot view for our state is, can we handle it?”
Lake George was one of three districts in the area to have already purchased electric school buses, which have been running since last year.
New York state is requiring that all school districts in the state discontinue purchasing diesel buses by 2027, with a mandate to have a fully electrified fleet of vehicles by 2035.
The presentation on Friday highlighted some of the challenges the districts have had to deal with since integrating the battery-powered buses into their system. Here are some takeaways:
- EV buses are longer and wider than diesel buses, and their tires stick out slightly from the wheel wells.
- EV buses cannot be undercoated for salt protection due to the high voltage electronics stored underneath them.
- The EV buses heat up faster in the wintertime, but do not come with air conditioning for the summer months.
- The average cost of an electric bus is more than double the cost of diesel buses, which has proven to be prohibitive for many districts to comply with the state’s timeline.
“It’s costing more in electric; it’s costing more in the cost of the bus, it’s costing more in terms of what we have to put in for infrastructure, it’s just costing more and all of that’s paid for in taxpayer dollars,” Scott Whittemore superintendent for business at Queensbury, laid out during the presentation.
In 2024, the district was awarded around $800,000 in grant funding to help with the purchase of four electric buses, but as more districts act to move into compliance with the mandate, those funds are likely to become less available.
Right now, the district spends around $1.3 million per year on buses for its seven to eight-year replacement schedule. Whittemore estimated that in order to meet the state’s 2035 mandate, the district would need to upscale that spending to nearly $4 million per year.
The infrastructure needed to maintain the buses is another hurdle for districts.
Jon Dawes, coordinator of capital projects and safety compliance at Queensbury, said the total cost to upgrade the system is around $1.4 million.
The district’s electric bill increased by 23 percent between 2024 and 2025 by adding the four buses to its grid. The amount of power that the district is pulling with just the four buses currently in use is in excess of 100 kilowatts per month, which Dawes said is enough to power 10-15 medium size houses. In addition, Dawes shared a letter the district received form National Grid, stating that due to the higher demand, the district would be placed at a level-3 service classification, “large general service.”
“Which means our demand is more, so that most likely means the price will be more,” he said.
While the buses themselves are popular among the drivers and the students, their performance is also a cause for concern.
Based on the route schedules, Whittemore said once the fleet is completely converted to EV buses, around 10 percent of them would not be able to complete their appointed routes on one charge.
“A lot of our buses go to Albany, that’s a long range for us they go almost 200 miles a day going back and forth, multiple stops,” he said.
When the buses batteries reach a 10 percent power level, they enter “Turtle Mode,” which is a safety feature that shuts down all non-essential components, including heat, and diverts power to sustain the batteries. When a bus is in “Turtle Mode,” it can only reach a maximum speed of 20-35 miles per hour and signals to the driver that there is only enough power for travel for an additional half mile to two-mile distance.
“Some of the things that cause [“Turtle Mode” are] extreme cold, extreme heat, electrical faults, program faults,” Dan Miller, coordinator of facilities and supervisor of transportation mechanics for the district said. “I can’t imagine being a bus driver and going down the highway and have that come on.”
Miller said that in February, when the temperature dropped to 19 degrees below zero, all four of the district’s buses were locked into “Turtle Mode” and could not be used.
“They had been on the charger, but to keep the batteries heated through the night, it was pulling all that energy,” Miller said.
WHAT LEGISLATORS SAY
Sen. Dan Stec (R-Queensbury), Assemblymembers Carrie Woerner (D-Round Lake) and Matt Simpson (R-Lake George), as well as Dan Wrenn from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office attended the presentation in Queensbury Friday.
“I’m going to co-sponsor a bill that would repeal this mandate, the juice is not worth the squeeze,” Stec said during the presentation. “This is all a component of the larger discussion that is hopefully going to happen in earnest in the next few weeks in Albany about the direction we’re going with greening up our energy grid.”
All three of the legislators said they were anxious to take the information shared on Friday with them to the Capitol.
“I have been very concerned about the EV bus mandate for a number of years now,” Woerner wrote in a follow-up email with The Post-Star. “My theoretical concerns about how challenging the transition would be were confirmed today.”
Like Stec, Woerner said she will use the case study information presented by the district to encourage changes to the state’s mandate.
“We now have real-world experience that can be used to evaluate the requirement that schools move to battery electric school buses, and based on that evidence-based analysis, adjust the policy accordingly,” Woerner wrote. “The challenges associated with transitioning from diesel to battery electric buses are significant, both financially and logistically, and cannot be overcome in an affordable manner on the timeline outlined in the law ... I will continue to recommend that we eliminate or modify substantially the requirement that all school districts begin to transition to EV buses beginning next year.”
Simpson said that he was already skeptical of the state’s mandate before the presentation. Based on the information he received, he said his skepticism was well-founded.
“Our schools are not ready to adopt a full transition to EV buses and it’s not because they aren’t willing,” Simpson wrote. “The fact is, whether it’s the electrical grid, the money to purchase new buses and the necessary infrastructure to support them [chargers, storage, etc.], and the bus technology itself is simply not ready for mass deployment.”
© 2026 The Post Star (Glens Falls, N.Y.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
