3.1.24 Meeting with Highland Fleets

March 1, 2024

Note: all dollar values in this document are just thrown out there to better visualize the situation. They are by no means the actual numbers.

• Intros

• James Klingensmith is the Director of Fleet Solutions at Highland Fleets
• Daniel Gottesman replaces Julia

• Boston-based

• SEB was there

• We are in a unique position in that everyone on board
• 8–10 year transition period. We are at the start.

• Highland (and James) will be there the full way

• RCS extended contract to ease transition to electric buses
• SuperSelby’s has 3 main depots, which are rented not owned

• Initial problem was that having the charging infrastructure on the leased property would be stranded property that could be lost in a default

• SuperSelby is retiring 6–7 diesel buses this year
• In the pilot, we could get 7 units for the next 10 years. We could do 15 years, but 10 years is more appropriate for the duration of the current Riverdale–SuperSelby contract
• News

• NYTVIP was subsumed by NYSERDA and NYSERDA no longer provides funding to private schools. While this is sad, NYSERDA was only for the first 2 transitioned units for $120k per bus.

• $ model for e-bus transition

• 
• Cost of electric is about double the cost of diesel
• Split payments over time vs. paying all years upfront

• $50k for day one vs. $2 million upfront

• The way to go

• In the first fundraiser, we will pay for all the EV charging infrastructure costs and duration of the EVs. Fundraise the whole amount on day 1 that slowly pays out to Highland over time.

• If we only paid for the first 3 years, we would start to get into threatening Riverdale’s credit score because if a default occurred when there was not enough fundraising to pay for the current year of e-buses.

• Future fundraisers will pay for more buses entering the fleet.

• Will be cheaper because there is no need to buy new chargers and build on the depot and the cost of buses will go down.

• Next steps

• Get price of diesel world

• Highland has different pricing analysis that SuperSelby does so it will need to calculate

• Get depot information

• Addresses

• Analyze depot

• Hop on call for depot choosing

• Get EV pricing
• Find delta

• Get cost on electric (ConEd prices, many other factors)
• Look at cost analysis with the club during a club meeting

• When you said that RCS extended the contract, did they do that for us or for a different reason?