Gouverneur, N.Y., a rural town with brutal winters near the Canadian border, waited three years to receive its first pair of electric school buses. It took no time for problems to start. After just one day of shuttling students, the buses’ high-voltage chargers began malfunctioning, sidelining the vehicles for weeks. When the buses were back on the road in November, their heating systems failed, forcing both out of service again, including one for four months.

Across the United States, school districts have started converting their bus fleets to electric from diesel. The transition has accelerated in recent years, fueled by more than $2.4 billion in federal grants under the Biden administration and spurred by mandates in California, New York and other states. Of the roughly 500,000 school buses nationwide, about 5,000 run on batteries.

But the rollout has been rocky. Their range on a single charge is a small fraction of that of traditional buses and drops in colder months. Maintenance issues can idle them for weeks. And they are expensive: Some cost nearly $500,000, two to three times the price of a diesel version. “It’s scary when the potential benefit doesn’t feel much better than a potential negative,” said Dale Munn, the business manager at the Gouverneur Central School District.

Now, some U.S. school leaders are abandoning electric buses or scaling back plans. The Trump administration has halted the federal grant program. The EPA said it would revise the Clean School Bus Program to offer “increased choice and affordable options.” In 2021, Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland committed to an all-electric fleet by 2035. Today, it has 285 battery-powered vehicles, but when it needed 150 new buses this year, school leaders chose diesel.