Battery Buses Hold 99.5% of Firm Zero-Emission Orders in Global Procurement Registry

A global registry of zero-emission bus procurement shows a sharp divide between battery-electric and hydrogen technologies. TFIE Strategy, which tracks 388 verified deals across 81 countries, recorded 13,165 firm orders for battery buses against just 65 for hydrogen — giving battery-electric models 99.5 percent of confirmed orders across both categories.

Those battery orders span 55 independent operators in multiple regions. Hydrogen contracts, by contrast, are held by only two buyers: the municipality of Qinyang in China, which is deliberately building out a hydrogen ecosystem, and Krefeld in Germany, which placed its order after direct operational experience with the technology.

Three structural factors support battery technology’s procurement dominance:

• the broadest buyer base, with orders distributed across dozens of municipal operators;
• the widest supplier ecosystem covering vehicles, components and service solutions;
• the largest accumulated body of daily commercial operating experience in real-world conditions.

Depot infrastructure remains a real barrier to faster battery fleet deployment. Scaling requires new substations, multi-megawatt grid connections and lengthy utility approvals — a process that takes years.

Hydrogen retains a role on specific routes where depot charging cannot fit within available schedules or grid capacity. In urban transit more broadly, battery-electric buses have become the dominant procurement standard.

Source: CleanTechnica