Electrifying buses

Improving public transport is one of the key challenges to decarbonize mobility. The good news is that the relatively small volumes of city buses have made them easier to electrify. Also, city buses are typically purchased by public entities, or companies acting on their behalf, who may have a stronger mandate to decarbonize than individual consumers. As a consequence, in more than half of European countries, over half of bus sales in 2023 were already fully battery electric. This added up to 36% for the EU, as some of the larger countries have not been able to adopt them as rapidly. Nonetheless it makes battery-electric the most popular type of powertrain, ahead of diesel. Furthermore, the adoption of zero-emission vehicles has been well ahead of EU targets, and all new EU city buses could be zero-emission by the end of the decade.

Source: Transport & Environment / Chatrou CME Solutions, June 2024.