Will 2023 Be the Year of the Electric Mass Transit Bus?

New orders for electric buses experienced unprecedented growth in 2022 driven, in part, by robust state and federal incentives, policy pressures and cost savings. With plenty of money in the pipeline, those purchases will continue. Electric transit buses are finding their way onto U.S. streets at an alarming pace, with some states seeing triple-digit growth in the technology in just the last year. A new report by CALSTART, a national nonprofit charged with advancing clean transportation technology, found that the number of zero-emission buses (ZEB) funded or on order in the U.S. has grown 66 percent since 2021, totaling some 5,480 full-size buses. There were about 72,700 full-size buses in operation in the U.S. in 2019, the most recent data year available, according to the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). Much of the growth in e-buses has been driven by federal incentives. The movement had a sharp surge following the federal infrastructure package, as well as by state efforts — particularly those in California to phase out fossil fuel-burning buses — to give agencies the incentives to go forward with electrification. The incentives served as the proverbial carrot for transit agencies to say, “we’re going to try something new,” said Jarrett Stoltzfus, senior director of government relations and public policy at Proterra. The company is one of the largest makers of electric transit vehicles in the United States. “The federal incentive has been a significant benefit, and will continue to be,” he added.

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