All four buses for our battery-electric bus pilot are now here!

The two Nova Bus LFSe buses and two New Flyer Xcelsior CHARGE buses are undergoing pre-delivery inspection at the manufacturer’s facilities.

Once they’re accepted by TransLink and Coast Mountain Bus Company, they’ll undergo additional testing, and fareboxes and radio equipment will be installed before entering service this summer.

The 2.5-year pilot will put battery-electric buses on route 100, traveling along Marine Drive through Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster.

At each end of the route (Marpole Loop and the bus exchange at SkyTrain’s 22nd Street Station), the buses will get a full charge in approximately 4 to 7 minutes.

Our battery-electric bus pilot project is part of a pan-Canadian initiative led by the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC).

It’s the first in Canada to test the cross compatibility of equipment from four separate manufacturers. Nova Bus and New Flyer are providing the buses, while ABB and Siemens are providing on-route overhead fast chargers.

Over the course of the project, we’ll collect data on bus and charging station performance, maintenance, and the overall customer experience. The pilot will provide valuable information for our Low Carbon Fleet Strategy, which envisions a future with a zero-emission bus fleet.