Sacramento County Unveils Fleet Of Electric School Buses

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – These buses may look yellow but they're really green.

"This is much different," said bus driver Eric Coleman. "The sound is unbelievable. It's like you're riding with no motor in there, that's how it feels."

Because there is no motor – they're electric. These 29 battery-electric school buses will be spread out over the Sacramento City, Elk Grove and the Twin Rivers school districts.

"It's way cool, it's totally awesome," said Timothy Shannon, director of transportation.

The project was funded in part by a $7.5 million grant that made an impact right away in the Twin Rivers School District.

"You have the first deployment of electric buses in the nation here, the biggest one in the whole nation," said Larry Greene, executive director of the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District.

And these blue rimmed and blue-bumpered buses do something normal school can't do.

"They're so quiet, that below 15 miles per hour they have to play music so that somebody will know that they are coming," Greene said.

The tune being thrown around for this new fleet is ice cream truck music.