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While the political battle rages on over mandates for consumer purchases of electric vehicles, Canadian municipalities have been going all-in on electric buses, and it hasn’t gone well. Despite the failures of electric bus fleets in numerous North American cities, local governments continue to commit to large-scale electric bus purchases. Calgary’s recent commitment to spend nearly half a billion dollars on a fleet of electric buses is one of the latest and largest expenditures in Canada.
Civic administrations and politicians have been going through the motions of due diligence on electric bus purchases, yet they ignore the negative results of their trials. The push for electric bus fleets appears ideological rather than practical.
In 2021, the city of Calgary budgeted $14 million for a pilot program, which would include purchasing 14 electric buses from Vicinity Motor Corp. The delivery of the buses was continually delayed until the order was finally cancelled in late 2024. The city says that no money was given to the now-bankrupt bus manufacturer, but it never disclosed how much had been spent on the chargers and maintenance facilities for a type of bus that no longer exists. By every measure, the trial was a failure. Money was wasted for years, and not a single bus made it to the road.
The city of Calgary ignored the failure and plowed ahead with a plan to purchase 259 electric buses from a different manufacturer at a price nearing $500 million. Since committing to that plan, the number of projected buses to be purchased has fallen to 120 while the cost remained the same. In other words, the price has more than doubled. A diesel bus in Calgary costs $400,000, according to Calgary Transit. The cost of electric buses is reaching over $4 million per bus. That’s a 1000 percent increase in costs per bus.
Mayor Jyoti Gondek said that “Zero-emission buses will be far less costly to maintain and operate with lower fuel costs when compared to conventional diesel buses.”
Calgary’s northern neighbour, Edmonton, ignored recommendations to start with a trial of five electric buses and jumped in with a purchase of 60 of them for $82 million. The buses were plagued with issues right from the beginning. The range made them nearly useless in winter, while they constantly broke down. By 2023, over three-quarters of the buses were out of service, and they couldn’t be repaired because the manufacturer had gone bankrupt. The Edmonton experiment was a total catastrophe, yet politicians and planners in Calgary appear to have ignored the lessons learned.
Examples of electric bus failures abound across North America. Philadelphia pulled an entire fleet of 25 buses off the road due to chronic issues. Austin, Texas, purchased 40 electric buses in 2020, but only six are operational today. Colorado Springs, Colorado, purchased four electric buses, but only two are operational. Albuquerque, New Mexico, purchased 16 electric buses from Chinese EV-maker BYD for $15 million but returned them in 2019 due to persistent issues.
Whether in hot cities or cool cities, high elevations or low, electric bus purchases have proven to be poor decisions. They have high upfront costs, terribly low ranges, tend to break down, and have charging infrastructure challenges.
The issue isn’t just with city buses. Prince Edward Island regrettably invested in 107 electric school buses. At any given time, 16-18 of those are out of commission due to breakdowns. The bus drivers’ union representative is warning that students will likely be missing out on extracurricular activities and field trips due to a lack of reliable buses.
Where we aren’t hearing about these sorts of issues is in the private sector. While companies are being encouraged to adopt electric alternatives to their vehicle fleets, they are reluctant to buy them. That’s because private companies tend to do a proper cost-benefit analysis when making major purchases, and they can easily see that electric vehicles are a terrible investment. Unfortunately, bureaucrats in government offices don’t have the same incentives to compel them to make decisions the same way.
What will it take to stop Canadian cities from sinking more money into electric buses if a history of failures won’t dissuade them?
To begin with, governments at all levels must drop their unrealistic emissions mandates. B.C., for example, has a mandate calling for 100 percent of urban buses to be zero-emission by 2030. Many cities have set similar goals despite the near impossibility of reaching them. Bureaucrats claim they are only following orders when procuring electric buses.
Secondly, citizens must speak up. Municipal politicians will react if waste becomes an election issue. Voters must make it clear they want their representatives to back off on electric bus procurements until the issues with them are resolved.
Most eyes are on the federal mandates for EVs, which will impact consumers and producers of personal vehicles. The billions being spent by local governments on electric buses are being overlooked.
The brakes must be applied to electric bus purchases until the technology advances into creating viable products.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
