The site where Muhammed Ali’s motor home was built will soon be humming again.
Not that The Greatest was the only one to snap up a WanderLodge back in the day when Blue Bird workers were churning out the 40-foot long, 6 mile-per-gallon behemoths. The $350,000 RVs were often outfitted with a bedroom, complete kitchen and several televisions.
Johnny Cash had one. Fellow outlaw Waylon Jennings, too.
But now, it’s a different world. And the empty lot in Fort Valley, Georgia, where Blue Bird built the motor homes until 2019 is about to be re-purposed for a market that is increasingly concerned with the spewing of fumes and greenhouse gases into the air.
And into the lungs of children.
On the empty site where the motor home factory stood, a 600,000 square-foot, 400-worker factory will be built to produce electric school buses, said Britton Smith, president of the iconic bus-maker.
“We expect to break ground this calendar year,” he said. “The plant would go live in late 2026.”
The company is getting $80 million from the U.S. Department of Energy, a grant that Blue Bird will match. The grant comes from DOE funding, totaling $1.7 billion spread among 11 sites in eight states, that’s part of the Biden administration push for sustainable energy and low emission vehicles. And the manufacturers are nearly guaranteed to have buyers because the program meshes with a $5 billion program created by the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that subsidizes the replacement of aging school buses with zero-emission transportation.
The DOE grant calls for the company to pony up a matching $80 million on its own for the project, something Blue Bird could do in a number of ways, Smith said.
“Blue Bird is a profitable company,” he said. “We are growing cash flow, and we have a healthy relationship with our bank. We could also issue equity.”
Blue Bird, founded in 1932, made its first electric bus in 1994, but didn’t launch a commercial business in electrics for about two decades.
The electric side of the business has been gearing up steadily. This year, Blue Bird will produce about 8,500 buses, mostly fueled by diesel and natural gas, but including more than 800 powered by electricity.
The new factory will help power Blue Bird toward its production goal of 12,000 buses a year, Smith said.
That doesn’t mean that Blue Bird is ready to say it will eventually phase out the older technologies, but the market’s trajectory is pretty clear, he said. “We see electric vehicles as the future from the transportation perspective.”
Blue Bird’s push into electric buses coincides with the shift in light vehicle manufacturing towards EVs. Light electric vehicle sales grew in the second quarter after a slow down in the first three months of the year. Adoption of EVs among consumers hasn’t been as brisk as many industry observers expected, but the segment is growing.
For buyers of electric buses, it’s still something of a financial trade-offs — at least, at first.
Yes, the buses are better for the local environment. And they don’t belch fumes into the air, meaning they are much better for the health of the students who ride in them day after day. But the price tag is steep. A diesel bus costs about $150,000. Electric school buses cost about $350,000.
Still, electric is much cheaper to operate.
The average cost of running a diesel-powered bus is 79 cents a mile. For electric, it’s just 19 cents a mile, Smith said.
For America’s schools and their often tight budgets, the government subsidies are intended to sweeten the deal: eliminating the upfront cost, getting the buses into action and hoping after that, the buses sell themselves.
A typical school bus travel about 10,000 miles a year and lasts an average of 15 years, although it could be anywhere between 12 and 20 years, Smith said. So, an electric bus on average would save the local schools 60 cents a mile, about $6,000 a year, $90,000 over 15 years and $120,000 over a two-decade lifetime.
Of course, that deal looks particularly good if the schools get the bus for free.
In January, federal officials announced grants totaling $57 million for a number of Georgia school districts to buy electric buses. So far, Blue Bird has made deliveries to only six school districts in the state, according to a company spokesman.
Clayton County Public Schools has federal funding to purchase 100 electric buses, and has thus far received 22 — including seven from Blue Bird, said spokesman Charles White.
Those buses start service Aug. 1, the first day of the coming school year, he said.
Fulton County Schools has one electric bus from Blue Bird, but for the moment is committed to propane powered vehicles, which make up more than 60% of its 930 buses, said spokesman Brian Noyes.
“The electric bus is fine, but we are 80 miles, end to end, and go about 9 million miles a year,” he said. “There are still a lot of different questions about the investment and how long the buses last.”
DeKalb County is getting $20 million to purchase about 25 electric buses and the infrastructure to support them. The district has not ordered the buses yet, said spokesman Donald Porter.
About 1,500 of the 2,000 Blue Bird employees are assembly workers who are represented by the United Steel Workers. They reached their first union contract with the company earlier this year. The new plant to be built for the electric buses will add roughly 400 unionized assembly line jobs.
The grant means more job security — and potentially better pay, said Patrick Watkins, an 18-year veteran of the Blue Bird assembly line.
Work on electric vehicles requires more training and more skills, he said, “Lowest pay on other jobs is $19 an hour. Most of the jobs in EV start at $24 an hour. A lot of guys will want to transfer over.”
