Electric buses have now been around long enough for transit agencies to have a good handle on the fuel and maintenance savings they can expect, and pilots are giving way to volume orders. In a recent article from CleanTechnica, Michael Barnard takes us on a tour of Canada to look at some of the electric bus deployments ongoing or planned.
The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) received three electric buses from manufacturers Proterra, New Flyer and BYD for evaluation in 2018. The following year, the TTC ordered 25 each from Proterra and New Flyer, and 10 from BYD. The TTC, which operates a total fleet of approximately 2,000 buses, has now ordered a total of 340 battery-electric buses from New Flyer and Nova, and deliveries are expected to be completed by the end of 2026.
The Regional Municipality of York, adjacent to Toronto, ordered 80 LFSe+ electric buses from Nova Bus in January 2025. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in 2026.
Ottawa, Canada’s capital, put four New Flyer XE40 electric buses into service in early 2022. In 2021, the city announced a plan to buy 450 electric buses by 2027, and to electrify its entire fleet of 940 buses by 2036.
The Société de Transport de Montréal was already operating 41 electric buses in 2023, and plans to transition to a fully electric or hybrid bus fleet by 2029.
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan received its first two electric buses from Nova Bus in 2024. The agency aims to have a 100% electric fleet by 2030.
In 2018, TransLink, the transit authority in Vancouver, piloted four battery-electric buses and two overhead chargers on one of the region’s busiest transit routes. The city also experimented with hydrogen fuel cell buses during the 2010 Winter Olympics, but the project was discontinued due to high operational costs.
Edmonton Transit Service (ETS), which serves the capital of Alberta, purchased 50 Proterra ZX5 electric buses in 2020. In 2022, ETS piloted two hydrogen-electric hybrid buses, but these are no longer in regular service, and the city cancelled orders for more hydrogen buses due to rising costs.
The transit agency in Winnipeg, Manitoba, home to bus manufacturer New Flyer, ordered a number of fuel cell buses from the firm, but cancelled the order (again, due to rising costs) and bought more diesel buses. “They’ll end up with electric eventually,” Mr. Barnard predicts.
Brampton Transit has ordered 10 LFSe+ battery-electric buses from Nova Bus, and deliveries are scheduled for 2025. The agency made long-term plans to purchase 700 battery-electric and 400 hydrogen fuel cell buses, based on what Barnard calls “a deeply flawed study by the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC) [that] underestimates the costs associated with hydrogen infrastructure and overstates the challenges of battery-electric buses.”
Barnard expects that Brampton will also cancel its plans to deploy fuel cell buses.
Mississauga, part of the Greater Toronto Area, runs a fleet of approximately 500 buses, almost half of them second-generation hybrid-electric models. The city is planning to pilot 10 fuel cell buses, despite Barnard’s “best efforts to get them to reconsider.”
If you’ve read this far, you’ve gathered that Mr. Barnard is no fan of hydrogen buses, which he and many others see as a higher-cost alternative to battery-electric that’s kept alive by government subsidies ladled out by credulous politicians eager to be seen to reduce emissions while continuing to use fossil fuels. In fact, Barnard’s LinkedIn site provides an ongoing chronicle of cancelled and/or failing hydrogen projects around the world.
Mr. Barnard concedes that electrification is not without difficulties for transit agencies—the main drawbacks are limited range and longer recharging times compared to diesel. A particular concern in Canada is of course cold weather, which reduces the range of electric buses significantly (hydrogen and diesel buses experience the same, but it’s not much of an issue thanks to their longer inherent range). “Transit agencies have had to rethink scheduling, route planning and bus maintenance strategies to account for these differences,” Barnard writes.
Deploying battery-electric buses also requires significant investment in infrastructure—charging stations, upgraded power supply systems and modifications to depots.
To help transit agencies with funding for vehicle procurement and infrastructure development, the Government of Canada introduced the Zero Emission Transit Fund (ZETF) in August 2021, allocating $2.75 billion over five years to support public transit and school bus operators. (Alas, the ZETF also funds hydrogen buses.) The Canada Infrastructure Bank has committed over $1.5 billion to accelerate the adoption of 5,000 zero-emission transit and school buses.
Source: CleanTechnica