Blue Bird Body Company is recalling 1,590 electric school buses because the bolts that hold the high-voltage battery pack in place may be loose, broken or missing. The condition can cut drive power and, in the more serious case Blue Bird describes, let the pack work free while the bus is driving. NHTSA received the filing on Oct. 2, 2026 as campaign 26V641000, and Blue Bird’s own number is R26AK.
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The buses are Vision and All American electric models in model years 2018 through 2024 and 2026, with production dates running from July 11, 2018 to June 17, 2025. Blue Bird names an XALT high-voltage battery as the pack involved. The company estimates that about 1% of the buses carry the defect and says it knows of no injuries or deaths.
Grade 8 capscrews on an XALT battery pack
Blue Bird’s Part 573 safety report is unusually precise about the hardware. The mounting bolt is a 3/8-16 by 1.25-inch hex flange capscrew, Grade 8, finished in yellow zinc dichromate, and it threads into a 3/8-16 hex nut with a serrated washer in the same finish. A compromised mounting, the report says, could cause a loss of propulsion or leave the battery to dislodge while the bus is driving, which raises the risk of a crash. The filing lists Blue Bird itself as the component manufacturer and leaves both the fastener part numbers and the supplier fields blank, so the report says nothing about who made the bolts. The production window runs nearly seven years, from July 2018 to June 2025.
The cause Blue Bird gives is torque. In September 2026 Blue Bird concluded that the torque specification for the mounting bolts was insufficient, and its safety committee classified the issue as a safety recall. The XALT pack involved is no longer in production, so the company says no containment is needed for buses still on the line.
Three years from the first broken bolt to a recall
The chronology starts in September 2023, when Blue Bird received a field report of broken battery mounting bolts. It responded with a service update that required bolt service at 12 months or 20,000 miles. In December 2025 another field report described a battery pack dislodging from a vehicle, which prompted an investigation and durability retesting. In June 2026 NHTSA contacted the company about a Vehicle Owner Questionnaire tied to that December report. Blue Bird’s committee acted in September, and the defect report was submitted in October.
Blue Bird counts five field reports between September 2023 and May 2026. The report does not mention warranty claims.
The 2023 service update was a manual change, not a recall, and the related-recall field in the filing is blank, so campaign 26V641000 is the first formal NHTSA action on these mounts. The new remedy also tightens the old schedule: Blue Bird says its service manuals will be updated to recommend bolt service every six months or 10,000 miles, half the 2023 interval on both the odometer and the calendar.
Counting from the first report to the filing, the gap is about three years, but the stretch that matters most for fleets is shorter. The December 2025 report of a pack coming out of a vehicle is the event that changed the investigation from a service-interval question into a durability one, and roughly ten months passed between that report and the Oct. 2 filing. Along the way the company retested durability, heard from NHTSA about an owner questionnaire in June, and only then, in September, found the torque specification wanting.
Thread locker, a new torque range and a sibling campaign
Under the repair, bolts are removed and inspected, damaged ones are replaced, and each is reinstalled to a new torque range with thread locker. NHTSA’s acknowledgment letter says dealers will do the work free of charge, and it adds that selling or delivering an affected bus is prohibited until it has been remedied, a restriction that matters to districts and contractors with new electric buses waiting for delivery. Owner notification letters are expected on Dec. 1, 2026, and Blue Bird customer service can be reached at 1-478-822-2242 with recall number R26AK. Owners can also reach the NHTSA Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236.
Blue Bird says the repair is available as soon as the recall is released, and it describes the action as phased, with dealer and owner notifications due on or before Dec. 1. Reimbursement for owners who service the bolts themselves falls under the general plan Blue Bird has on file with the agency. The filing says dealers or owners can carry out the inspection and bolt replacement.
The school buses are not the only vehicles in the action. According to The EV Report, which covered the filings on Oct. 14, a second campaign, 26V642000, covers 16 All American Electric transit buses from model years 2022 through 2024 under the same R26AK number. The outlet also noted that Blue Bird reported 355 electric bus deliveries in its fiscal third quarter and a firm backlog of more than 770 electric vehicles.
NHTSA’s campaign record gives the consequence in the agency’s words: loose or missing bolts can cause a loss of drive power, increasing the risk of a crash. Its dataset entry lists the same defect for the same 1,590 buses, so the unit count, the model years and the remedy agree across the agency’s three documents.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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