New York parents watched their kids shiver on state-mandated electric school buses this winter.
Now the mechanic who runs those buses just did the math nobody in Albany wanted done.
And the number he came up with should end the electric school bus debate forever.
The Nine Times Problem
Pat Elwell runs transportation for Naples Central School District in upstate New York.
He didn't set out to torch Biden's green agenda – he just compared the receipts.
Diesel buses cost his district 36 cents per mile to operate.
The electric buses Biden's program pushed on them cost $3.18 per mile.
That's not a typo – that's nearly nine times more expensive.
Superintendent Kevin Swartz translated that into plain English for his taxpayers: replacing just two buses a year at the electric price means $600,000 in added costs annually – and that doesn't touch the charging infrastructure upgrades the district would still need.
Naples is a small rural district with a tight budget.
They can't absorb that difference.
So they're done buying electric.
The Winter Nobody Warned Them About
Elwell told local outlet News10NBC that about half of this winter, he simply didn't use the electric buses.
The reason? Twenty percent of the battery charge was being consumed just to heat the vehicles.
That forced mid-route recharges to make afternoon runs.
Elwell put it plainly: "The technology is not there, the batteries are not there."
https://twitter.com/FoxBusiness/status/2033672218316533977?s=20
The buses function best between 20 and 80 degrees – a temperature window that eliminates most of upstate New York's calendar year.
Other districts are hitting the same wall.
Gananda Central School District estimated a full 30-bus electric fleet with necessary upgrades would cost $11 million.
They currently have enough saved to buy half of one electric bus.
Biden's $5 Billion That Bought Almost Nothing
While Naples was struggling to heat its two electric buses, Biden and Kamala Harris were cheerfully handing out $5 billion in Clean School Bus program money.
The EPA's own watchdog found the program was riddled with "potential fraud, waste, and abuse" – and rescinded $38 million in ineligible rebates in FY 2022 alone.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee issued its verdict: "overall a failure and, in many cases, a waste of Americans' hard-earned taxpayer dollars."
Lion Electric received $160 million in taxpayer money through the program and then went bankrupt in 2024 – leaving school districts with undelivered buses, voided warranties, and zero recourse.
Proterra – personally promoted by Biden, Harris, and Pete Buttigieg – also went bankrupt in 2023.
The Inspector General found the EPA had "no mechanism for verifying the accuracy or legitimacy of applicant information" – meaning they handed out billions on the honor system.
Out of the first $1 billion tranche designed to put 2,400 buses on the road, only 135 buses across 61 districts were actually deployed.
Fifty-five districts withdrew from the program entirely.
The money moved.
The buses didn't.
What Trump Is Doing While Democrats Double Down
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin didn't sugarcoat it.
"The Clean School Bus program has been a disaster of poor management and wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars," Zeldin said in February 2026.
Under Trump, the EPA froze remaining program funds and launched a full revamp – opening it to biofuels, compressed natural gas, and reliable American energy options Biden had deliberately excluded.
Zeldin has cancelled roughly $30 billion in wasteful grants and contracts agency-wide since taking office.
The Clean School Bus disaster was next in line.
While Trump is cleaning up the mess, New York and California are still pressing the mandate – New York requiring all new bus purchases to be electric starting in 2027, with a full fleet transition by 2035.
New York alone faces an estimated $9 billion transition cost by 2035 at current prices.
The Bethlehem Central School District said the quiet part out loud in their budget newsletter: they are "not planning to add to its fleet of electric school buses in 2025-26 due to uncertainty surrounding the federal grant funding that has made EV buses affordable."
Translation: without a federal bailout, the math doesn't work.
And Pat Elwell in Naples already ran that math.
Nine times the cost per mile.
Half the winter days the buses can't run.
An extra $600,000 a year ripped from taxpayers in a small rural district.
That's what Biden's green school bus utopia looks like when a mechanic tells the truth.
Sources:
- Eric Revell, "Electric school bus mandates bring new costs for taxpayers, districts," Fox Business, March 16, 2026.
- "Committee Staff Report Exposes Failures in Biden-Harris EPA's Electric School Bus Program," House Energy and Commerce Committee, 2024.
- "EPA Announces Path Forward to Revamp the Clean School Bus Program," U.S. EPA, February 19, 2026.
- "School Districts Revert to Diesel Buses as Poor Performance Restricts Electric Bus Usage and Bankruptcies Affect Service," Institute for Energy Research, September 2025.
- "Push for Electric School Buses Seems to Be Losing Power," Empire Center for Public Policy, June 2025.
- "New York School Districts Face Challenges in Electric Bus Transition," WHAM, September 2025.
- "'A Failure': Congressional Investigation Savages Kamala Harris's $5 Billion Electric School Bus Plan," Washington Free Beacon, September 2024.