Featured: The billion-dollar potential of the ordinary American school bus [w/video] Are you an aspiring New or Used Car Buyer looking for your dream car? Visit Cars4sa.co.za Filed under: Electric, Technology For the better part of seven decades, the ordinary American school bus has remained exactly the same. Someday soon, it could undergo a radical change. Next year, three California school districts will soon participate in a experiment that will examine whether school buses can be used beyond their traditional scope of transporting children to and from classrooms. At the end of the day, this could be about who owns the battery. - Jean-Francois Tremblay. A group of companies operating a Clinton Global Initiative grant envision a zero-emissions future for school buses thats far more versatile. Theyre working with the schools to retrofit six school buses that double as rolling generators in their spare time. Once their appointed rounds are complete, these school buses can be used to make additional money for their owners by charging their new electric battery packs at off-peak hours and later selling the electricity back to power companies at higher prices during high-demand times. During power outages or other emergencies, the buses could transform into mobile generators used to power hospitals, command posts or other critical places. In case of a disaster, its not a bus, its a generator on wheels, said Kevin Matthews, co-director of the project, who works for DC-based consulting firm National Strategies. The project is a novel rethinking of a piece of vehicular equipment that has essentially stayed the same since first national school-bus standards were adopted in 1939. Continue reading The billion-dollar potential of the ordinary American school bus [w/video] The billion-dollar potential of the ordinary American school bus [w/video] originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 11 Dec 2014 12:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 17:54:03 +0000