From the Mayor of London's office:The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and Transport for London (TfL» ) have announced that the capital will own Europe’s largest fleet of electric buses, as they revealed the first two all-electric bus routes for central London.
The Mayor announced that routes 507 and 521 will exclusively run a 51-strong fleet of all-electric buses by the end of the year, as part of his ambitious campaign for a dramatic improvement in of air quality in the capital. Combined with 22 all-electric buses already running in outer London, it will take the capital’s entire fleet of electric buses up to 73 – the largest in Europe.
The move to the all-electric single-deck buses, made in Britain by Chinese company BYD and British manufacturer ADL, will eliminate NOx emissions on the routes and reduce CO2 emissions by 40 per cent. The buses will also be the first to include screens showing the next five stops and how the Tube and Overground is running, as well as 12 seats with USB sockets to help passengers charge their phones.
The first nine of these buses were unveiled at Waterloo Bus Garage today (9 September). Earlier in the morning the Mayor met with Xu Qin, the Mayor of Shenzhen, China, to mark the launch day and discuss approaches to tackling air pollution.
The phased delivery of the 51 buses marks a significant step forward in the Mayor’s comprehensive plan to transform the capital’s bus fleet. This plan includes all 300 single-deck buses that travel through central London to be zero emission by 2020, and all 3,100 double deck buses to be hybrid by 2019.
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