PhoenixEV, a manufacturer of electric vehicles, said it’s delivered five, 40-foot ZX5 battery electric buses to the University of California, Irvine (UCI).
UCI has had an electric fleet since January 2018 and is the first university in the nation to go all electric.
Since then, UCI has added 25 buses to its fleet and logged about 1.2 million miles with them.
Ridership for the 2023-24 academic year was nearly 1.5 million.
The buses are charged using UCI’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.
“UC Irvine continues to lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by committing to ensuring that at least 50% of fleet acquisitions are zero or low emission vehicles,” Ron Fleming, the university’s executive director of transportation and distribution services, said in a statement on July 17.
Costs of the five new buses were not disclosed. They were delivered in May.
Wide Range
Headquartered in Anaheim, PhoenixEV offers a wide range of EV products including transit buses, shuttle buses, medium duty trucks and school buses. PhoenixEV is a brand of Phoenix Motor Inc. (Nasdaq: PEV).
The company employs over 200, with about 10% of the workforce based in Orange County where the medium-duty units are manufactured. Additionally, the Anaheim location also serves as an engineering, sales and service hub.
Phoenix shares have lost about 35% of their value over the past year and were trading at 45 cents apiece as of July 18.