Bus Buyers Have Overwhelmingly Chosen Battery-Electric

Transit agencies worldwide have overwhelmingly selected battery-electric technology for zero-emission bus fleets, with procurement data indicating that hydrogen fuel-cell options have failed to gain significant traction.

What Happened

A comprehensive global procurement register compiled across 81 countries and 388 sourced records reveals a stark disparity in firm orders. The data identifies 13,165 battery-electric buses and only 65 hydrogen fuel-cell buses that have been firmly ordered or awarded. This split represents a ratio of approximately 200 battery-electric buses for every hydrogen bus, with battery-electric accounting for about 99.5% of the firm acquisitions captured for the two technologies. The register distinguishes these firm orders from tenders, options, framework quantities, and funding announcements to ensure the figures reflect actual buying decisions.

Why It Matters

The concentration of hydrogen purchasing is as revealing as the raw numbers. All 65 hydrogen buses come from just two purchasing bodies, whereas battery-electric orders are distributed across 55 different agencies. The two hydrogen buyers include Qingyang in China, which is building a municipal hydrogen ecosystem as part of a broader development program, and Krefeld in Germany, an operator that chose to expand its existing hydrogen fleet after gaining operating experience. These cases demonstrate that hydrogen can work under specific conditions, but the lack of replication after years of demonstrations suggests that battery-electric has become the default reference technology for normal urban and suburban procurement. For agencies, this means the primary challenges are no longer about choosing the propulsion technology, but rather addressing deployment constraints such as grid planning, depot connections, and charging reliability.

The Bottom Line

With battery-electric procurement spanning dozens of buyers across diverse climates and grids, the market evidence suggests that hydrogen should be treated as an exception requiring specific operational justification. Policy priorities are shifting toward solving infrastructure and financing hurdles for battery-electric fleets rather than funding further comparative demonstrations of propulsion technologies.