Teton County And Electric Buses: Setting Their Sights.

Jackson, Wyoming.  It’s Wyoming’s Austin, except the billionaires have chased out the millionaires long ago.  Teton County is a natural wonderland, particularly in the winter, where the well-heeled, and others, can enjoy some of America’s best skiing.  As with Austin, Jackson is a haughty blue island in a vast red political sea, and as with Austin, Jackson’s residents are determined to be a shining beacon of wokeness.
From November to March, Jackson, and the surrounding Teton County is a deep freeze, with an average high temperature of 34.6° and an average low of 11.4°.  It’s below freezing–much below–most of the time.  Keep in mind it’s always windy in Wyoming, so the wind chill is virtually always far below zero.  Notice from the chart above the average record low for those months was -40.8, and that’s not adding in the windchill.  Jackson is no tropical paradise in October and April either.  Keep those climate figures in mind.
Teton County operates a fleet of 31 buses, not only for locals, but largely for shuttling tourists to ski.  For years, that fleet provided good service.  The buses were reliable, easily repaired and parts were available.  But according to Kevin Killough at Cowboy State Daily, the visionaries of Jackson wanted to change all that:
Teton County and the town of Jackson had set its sights on a low-emission transit system for the county.
The Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit (START) system, a joint operation between Jackson and Teton County, bought eight electric buses to complement its fleet of 31.
But none of the electric buses are running, and so the town’s transit system is relying on its diesel fleet.
Considering the blue political island of Jackson, this is unsurprising.  It’s unsurprising because d/S/Cs make their own reality and try to force others to live in it, while spending public money on unicorn farts and fairy dust—like electric buses.
‘Moreover, governments’ politically-motivated reliance on electric vehicles like buses has been a disaster. This is a typical ‘green’ fiasco:
‘More than two dozen electric Proterra buses first unveiled by the city of Philadelphia in 2016 are already out of operation, according to a WHYY investigation.

 

The entire fleet of Proterra buses was removed from the roads by SEPTA, the city’s transit authority, in February 2020 due to both structural and logistical problems—the weight of the powerful battery was cracking the vehicles’ chassis, and the battery life was insufficient for the city’s bus routes.
The city paid $24 million for the 25 new Proterra buses, subsidized in part by a $2.6 million federal grant.’
Philadelphia knew the electric buses couldn’t provide the same service as its ICE buses, so they rigged the conditions:
Philadelphia placed the Proterra buses in areas where it thought they could succeed but quickly learned it was mistaken. Two pilot routes selected in South Philadelphia that were relatively short and flat compared with others in the city were too much for the electric buses.
‘Even those routes needed buses to pull around 100 miles each day, while the Proterras were averaging just 30 to 50 miles per charge,’ WHYY reporter Ryan Briggs wrote.
Proterra claimed its buses had a 329 mile range.  Things were no better elsewhere:
Similar problems have been found in other cities that partnered with Proterra. Duluth, Minn., which, like Philadelphia, waited three years for its Proterra buses to be delivered, ultimately pulled its seven buses from service ‘because their braking systems were struggling on Duluth’s hills, and a software problem was causing them to roll back when accelerating uphill from a standstill,’ according to the Duluth Monitor.
Note that these locations all experience winter, though not nearly as cold as Jackson.  With this well-known lack of performance background—Proterra’s problems have been widely publicized and well known for years—Jackson bought—you guessed it—eight Proterra buses.  Or actually, American taxpayers paid for most of them.

Much, much more on the disaster that is electric buses here:
https://statelymcdanielmanor.wordpress.com/2023/09/29/teton-county-and-electric-buses-setting-their-sights/#more-51147