Anteater Express adds five new buses to electric fleet
UC Irvine is the first university to go with all-electric buses
UC Irvine’s pioneering all-electric bus fleet grew in May when it added five 40-foot ZX5 battery electric buses. The new buses came from PhoenixEV, a leading manufacturer of innovative electric buses.
UC Irvine has had an electric fleet since January 2018 and is the first university in the nation to go all electric. Since then, UC Irvine has added 25 buses to its fleet, logging 1,183,210 miles. The buses annually travel 184,938 miles, averaging 3,555 miles weekly. Ridership for the 2023-24 academic year was 1,464,378.
The buses are charged using UC Irvine’s state-of-the-art microgrid, which consists of an internal utility tunnel loop connected to the local utility via an on-campus substation. The internal utility loop spans around the campus and connects the community of over 30,000 people to various distributed energy resources, including charging stations for each of the new Anteater Express buses. Charging the fleet costs only $.37 per mile compared with the $1.53 per mile cost of using diesel.
“UC Irvine continues to lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by committing to ensuring that at least 50 percent of fleet acquisitions are zero or low emission vehicles,” said Ron Fleming, executive director of transportation and distribution services.
For more information regarding UC Irvine’s transportation history, check out: https://shuttle.uci.edu/our-history/. Also, UC Irvine has an amazing history of pioneering sustainability. Learn more about their endeavors here: https://news.uci.edu/2023/12/11/americas-greenest-university/.
PhoenixEV specializes in designing, building and integrating electric drive systems, along with manufacturing heavy-duty transit buses and medium- to light-duty commercial EVs.
“PhoenixEV is proud of our partnership with UC Irvine,” said Denton Peng CEO of PhoenixEV. “UC Irvine is a forward-thinking university dedicated to sustainable transportation for their students and community, and we are delighted to be a strategic electric bus partner with UC Irvine.”