Electric Bus Maker Blue Bird is Schooling the EV Skeptics As Its Stock Soars

It's an opportunity for us to differentiate ourselves and, and have a product that that customers are looking for and as more opportunities for school districts to buy the EVs come out and then we're very happy to be able to lead the way. My name is Britton Smith, I'm the president of Bluebird. Bluebird really started investing in EVs in the 90s. So our first electric vehicle was in 1994. We had demonstration vehicles for the Atlanta Olympic Games and we continued our development really through the 2000s. And the 2018 Bluebird launched its first electric vehicles, electric school bus in the market. A school bus is really a. Perfect application for electrification. When you think about it, a a schoolist route is relatively short, so 30 to 40 miles in the morning and afternoon and a Bluebird school bus has about 130 mile range, so really can cover most of those routes. In the school bus industry there's about 500,000 school buses on the road and less than 2% are electric, over 93% are diesel. So there's a really large opportunity to electrify that fleet within Bluebird. We're selling about 9% of our volume every year is is electric. We believe in a clean future, but. Not just on electrification, but also propane that provides 97% less emissions than a than a diesel bus. Bluebird has consistently led the way on safety. In 2024, Bluebird is taking safety to the next level for the first time. It's an industry first. Bluebird will have standard 3 point safety belts on all new school buses. We really believe that this is the next evolution in safety and ensuring that children and school bus drivers are well protected on the school bus. Bluebird already has EVs deployed to 42 States and 10 Canadian provinces. So we've really already deployed school buses in in all different climates and. And, and across the country, but this is really just the additional funding has really helped just increase the interest across the country. And the kids really like it when they jump on a Bluebird electric school bus. They think they feel like they're riding into the future because they do know that electrification is the future of transportation. It's getting them excited about this new wave of transportation. We're breaking a lot of the norms, a lot of these conventional wisdoms that you can't be a profitable EV company. Well, obviously that's that's not true with Bluebird. We're doing quite well as an EV leading company and transport to student transportation. The message from Bloomberg transition to electrification is that you can do so profitably. Bluebird shows that as an EV company, you can still make money, and Bluebird is doing that with every bus that we sell. On the unionization front, we've also shown that you can be a profitable company and have a great relationship with our employees as well as the union that you're working with.