It was only about a month ago it was announced that Copenhagen’s city buses are now 100 percent electric. Other European cities are electrifying their bus fleets too, as we see with a new announcement about 240 electric buses planned for Hamburg, Germany by 2031. The plan for 240 electric buses is in addition to 350 electric buses that were previously ordered to be delivered by 2030. At the moment, Hamburg has about 432 electric buses in its city fleet, which is 39 percent of the total. Adding hundreds more electric ones will move the count toward well over 50 percent as the city progresses towards its goal to have 100 percent zero-emissions buses by the early 2030s. “Our direction remains clear: we continue to consistently advance the electrification of our bus fleet. At the same time, we have the responsibility to ensure that public transport remains stable, flexible, and reliable even in exceptional situations,” said Robert Henrich, CEO of Hochbahn. Hamburg has a population of about 1.9 million people and is Germany’s second-largest city. Some critics of electric vehicles try to claim they run on electricity from coal, but electricity used to charge EVs usually comes from grids that are powered from a mix of energy sources. Hamburg has a goal to have about 65 percent green energy by 2030. The entire German nation is aggressively moving toward renewable electricity and has a goal to achieve 80 percent of its energy mix from that source in several years. So, no, electric vehicles in Germany do not only run on electricity from coal. Electric motors are much more energy efficient than diesel and gas engines. Electric buses do not directly generate toxic air pollution, which is a primary reason why some cities are replacing old diesel buses with fully electric ones. Hamburg’s air could be cleaner to help its residents be healthier. “Of all the pollutants in the air we breathe, nitrogen oxides (NOx), especially nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and fine dust (PM = ‘particulate matter’) are the most harmful to human health. But also the pollutants benzene/xylene/toluene, carbon monoxide (CO), ground-level ozone (O3) and sulfur dioxide (SO2), which have fallen sharply in recent years, which are typical of car traffic, can impair human health and must be controlled (see ‘Effects of air pollutants’).” Electricity costs less than diesel fuel, and electric vehicles can have a lower cost of ownership than some fossil fuel vehicles. Image Credit: Aliasdoobs — own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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