First battery-electric OC Transpo buses unveilled

The City of Ottawa is showcasing one of four new battery-electric buses, which will be entering service early in 2022.

OC Transpo’s St-Laurent Garage has undergone significant retrofits to welcome the new 40-foot vehicles, with four plug-in style charging stations installed by Envari Energy Solutions, a subsidiary of Hydro Ottawa. 

The new battery-electric buses will be of similar capacity and design as OC Transpo’s existing 40-foot diesel buses, to provide a standardized customer experience, and will run routes based on a range of 250 kilometres in typical urban operation without recharging. A bus can be charged from empty to full in five hours.

OC Transpo is in the early stages of a fleet conversion plan that will seek to add an additional 74 battery-electric buses to its fleet in 2023, with 450 zero-emission buses phased into operation by 2027. With the gradual phase-out of diesel buses as they reach their end of life, OC Transpo could achieve a fully zero-emission bus fleet by 2036. 

The city hopes to leverage government loans, funding and grants, so that no additional municipal tax funding will be required to convert OC Transpo’s transit fleet to zero-emission buses.

In addition to offering a quieter ride, battery-electric buses are expected to offer savings through reduced operating costs. A diesel-powered bus consumes on average 35,000 litres of fuel per year.

Battery-electric buses are currently the most widely used zero-emission technology in the transit industry, and are on the roads of several Canadian municipalities, including Montréal, Toronto, Edmonton, and Winnipeg.

The city's Climate Change Master Plan includes the goal of reducing emissions from City operations by 100 per cent by 2040.