USA / Germany – Thomas Built Buses of High Point, North Carolina, USA (a subsidiary of Daimler Trucks North America Inc of Portland, Oregon, USA) is to supply the first 50 of its ‘Jouley’ electric school buses to the state of Virginia. Their introduction is the first step of an initiative by Virginia based power company, Dominion Energy, which plans to switch 1,050 of the school buses in Virginia from diesel to electrically powered ones. As a result, Thomas Built has won the largest order to date for electric school buses in the USA.

The battery technology employed on the Jouley is the result of a co-operation with California -based Proterra. It has a total power capacity of 220kWh and an estimated range of 134 miles. At present, Thomas Built Buses is the only school bus manufacturer to offer DC fast charging architecture as standard equipment. The locally emissions free Jouley can be charged in about three hours with the optional Proterra 60kW fast charging system and can, when properly equipped, supply power back to the power grid using vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology.