7000 LPG-powered school buses in the US

© Davenport EnergyBlue Bird Corporation is the leader in terms of autogas school bus production and sales

The title kind of gave it all away, yet here we go – there are 7000 LPG-powered school buses on duty across the US today, serving to transport 500 thousand pupils to their schools daily. Given how big the country is, that's probably a small portion of the overall number, but this only goes to show how much potential there still is for implementing more vehicles running on autogas.

But not only that – there are actually remarkable discrepancies when you compare state to state. For example, as many as 2600 out of the overall 7000 buses (that's more than 37 percent) are used in Texas alone. This is because the school district authorities in Texas are consistent in their actions and have been betting on autogas for years.

This is particularly true of the county of Dallas, where 375 of 1825 school buses are fueled with the cheaper gaseous petrol equivalent. The vehicles are refueled at 7 stations across the county and annual collective fuel consumption is approx. 900 thousand gallons (some 3,5 million litres). But since more and more school districts (in Texas and elsewhere) are making the switch to autogas, the market offer of buses expands accordingly – such vehicles are currently included in the line-ups of Blue Bird, Collins Bus, Thomas Built, Navistar and IC Bus.