Irvine Connect confirmed to be permeant
It's not confirmed to be permanent yet and there will be a new house of city council members by the time comes to renew the contract. Apologies for my mistake.
With the recent round of public transport funding Irvine city council has asked and received 4.5 million dollars to replace the current CNG cutaway busses running on the route with 12 new electric cutaway busses. There could also be a potential route expansion or service expansion in the future as the current service only uses 5 busses at a time (plus a few extra in storage in case one brakes down). I assume this project will be carried out in phases with them replacing the current units with electric ones and then acquiring additional electric buses in the future on another funding round.
Funding applied for:
https://calsta.ca.gov/-/media/calsta-media/documents/tircp-cycle-7-applications-receivedfinal-a11y.pdf
Funding awarded: