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Daniel Girard pulls his $1.2-million electric bus into the parking lane under the recharging dock at Square Victoria during Friday morning rush hour, and waits for the two metal arms to descend and give him a quick charge.

Nothing happens.

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Girard has been driving a bus for the Société de transport de Montreal (STM) for 39 years, so he knows a thing or two about parking. But the system is finicky, so he reverses and lines up the bus again as a photographer snapped shots of the rare green breed: one of only three fully electric buses in the city’s fleet of 1,800. They run on the No. 36 line connecting downtown Montreal to the Angrignon métro station in the west, a distance of 11 kilometres. The buses have a range of only 37 kilometres.

Girard gets it right, and the arms connect with the bus and send 350kW of juice surging into the bus’s batteries.

“Isn’t it the coolest thing?” says a young woman passing by.