Over 9,900 Electric Buses Operating In Latin America Now

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Much or most of the news about the electrification of transportation is about personal transportation: e-bikes, cars, SUVs, pickup trucks, and electric motorcycles. This focus makes sense because many online readers are interested in such vehicles so content about them gets clicks, reads, and social media engagement. There may be far less interest, generally speaking, in fleet vehicles.

However, electrified fleet vehicles operate many hours per day and provide many benefits when they replace highly polluting gas and diesel fleet vehicles. Diesel buses move huge numbers of people, but they generate vast amounts of toxic air pollution that harms human health, contributes to premature human deaths, and contributes to climate change. Fossil fuels are the primary contributor to climate change, and fossil fuels regularly spill in water bodies and on land, harming wild creatures and contaminating habitats. Fossil fuels are also connected to geopolitical instability, corrupt politics, and dumb wars that have tremendous costs financially, environmentally, and to human lives.

In the US, personal transportation dominates, while outside the country, public transportation is used more frequently by people in other nations.

The website E-Bus Radar shows there are over 9,900 electric buses in Latin America now — that includes the Caribbean. The buses category includes battery-powered buses and trolleybuses. The top bus manufacturers, unsurprisingly, are Chinese: BYD, Foton, Yutong Bus, and Zhongtong Bus.

Electric buses can be run on clean, renewable electricity from solar power, wind power, hydropower, and geothermal. Diesel and gas buses can only be operated using dirty fossil fuels that contain toxic chemicals. Clean, renewable electricity can be generated domestically, within a country, whereas too many nations currently spend billions of dollars or much more for imported foreign fossil fuels. Electricity also typically costs less than gasoline and diesel.

Electric buses have huge battery packs that can be used to store electricity to be utilized as backup electricity in virtual power plants. They also don’t expose bus drivers and passengers to diesel exhaust and fumes that harm human health.

The vision for greater sustainability and improved public health is electric vehicles, both personal and fleet vehicles, combined with clean, renewable electricity and energy storage.

While many electric bus news articles are about cities and towns acquiring 10–200 electric buses in one period, over longer time frames the total number of electric buses continues to grow in much larger numbers. Santiago, Chile, may already have over 4,000 electric buses, for example. Copenhagen, Denmark has about 100 percent electric buses. Eventually, all gas and diesel buses may be replaced with clean, electric buses.