Heavy-Duty EV Maker Proterra Gets $20 Million From MK Energy for Bus Factory

Heavy-Duty EV Maker Proterra Gets $20 Million From MK Energy for Bus Factory

Heavy-duty electric-vehicle maker Proterra Inc. today announced $20 million in funding from cleantech investor MK Energy and Infrastructure LLC to hasten construction of Proterra's EV bus factory in Greenville, S.C.

The plant is scheduled break ground later this year and have capacity to make 2,500 EcoRide BE-35 buses annually and employ 1,300 workers over the next five years. Funds will also be used to advance Proterra's clean-technology research.
 
"Our partnership with MK E+I will help us bring new jobs to Greenville and environmentally friendly buses to transit agencies and communities around the world, allowing them to slash fuel costs and significantly reduce noise and air pollution," Proterra President and CEO Jeffery Granato said in a statement.
 
At the Greenville plant, Proterra will manufacture its leading transit bus, the EcoRide BE-35 (pictured), a zero-emissions, fast-charge, battery-electric transit bus that replaces traditional diesel buses.

The EcoRide BE-35 achieves 500 percent greater fuel efficiency than conventional diesel buses and more than 400 percent greater efficiency than the most advanced hybrid transit buses traveling the roads today, according to the Bus Testing Center in Altoona, Penn., which is sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration.

Over a 12-year lifecycle, Proterra buses will save an average of $400,000 per bus in fuel costs as compared to a conventional diesel bus and almost $300,000 when compared to advanced hybrid buses, the company said. The BE-35 reduces noise pollution to a fraction of that produced by today's EcoRideaditional diesel buses.

Moreover, if every diesel transit bus in the United States were replaced with an EcoRide BE-35, it would reduce consumption of fossil fuels by approximately 493 million gallons per year, or more than the amount consumed each year by every single car in the state of Colorado or South Carolina, the company said.

Scott Doggett:  is an AutoObserver.com Associate Editor.