In cities around the world, people are embracing electric buses, which provide a quieter, smoother ride without the harmful pollution from traditional gas and diesel buses. For example, bus riders in Pune, India, will skip boarding a diesel bus to wait for an electric bus, and in Santiago, Chile, riders rate electric buses more favorably than the rest of the public transit system.
Electric buses are necessary for reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the transport sector. Buses — including city, coach and school buses — make up approximately 5% of global transport carbon dioxide emissions. Electrifying the bus fleet could also provide a model for electrifying trucks, which make up about a quarter of transport emissions.
What will it take to electrify the world’s bus fleet, and which countries are stepping up to the challenge? Five countries — China, the Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland and Denmark — are already setting an example by growing their electric bus sales from less than 6% to more than 60% of total bus sales in six years or less. That pace exceeds what is needed globally between 2024 and 2030 to meet climate targets.
Shifting to electric buses will require supportive local and national policies. The countries leading this charge can provide lessons on how to grow electric bus sales quickly.
The Global State of Electric Buses
There are about 780,000 electric buses on the world’s roads as of 2024. Electric buses include battery electric buses, plug-in hybrid electric buses and fuel cell electric buses. So far, 94% of all electric buses are battery electric, which are expected to continue to dominate the industry.
More than 90% of the world’s electric buses are located in China — nearly 700,000 in total. China experienced massive growth in electric buses from 2014 to 2018, a time when other countries had barely started deploying them. In 2017, Shenzhen became the first city in the world to electrify its entire bus fleet (16,000 buses). By 2023, the top 10 global cities with the most electric bus sales were in China, with Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chengdu and Beijing leading the way. Outside of China, Santiago, Chile is the city with the highest electric bus sales.
The European Union is home to 17,000 electric buses, with most of the sales growth taking place after 2018. Several European countries such as the Netherlands, Finland and Switzerland have achieved very high rates of electric bus adoption.
India, South Korea and the United States are each home to more than 10,000 electric buses.
China: The Primary Electric Bus Player
China started deploying electric buses more than a decade ago, becoming the leading electric bus manufacturer and market in the world.
At first, the government supported electric buses as a strategic industry. China saw a competitive advantage in pursuing EVs in an already saturated fossil-fuel-vehicle-manufacturing market. City buses were a good candidate for early electrification because they were a public purchase and had fixed routes with a range — on average 120 miles per day — that could operate on a single charge.
After years of unhealthy smog in China’s most high-profile cities, the desire to reduce air pollution and improve health also became a motivator. The central government began evaluating local officials’ performances based on their progress in reducing air pollution, which created an incentive for those officials to electrify transportation.
In 2009, China began an EV subsidy program in 10 pilot cities. Over time the program added 88 more cities. It was eventually replaced with a national EV subsidy program. The government also put in place favorable polices that lowered electricity prices for charging electric buses and gradually removed its existing subsidies for diesel buses.
Cities in China also designed their own policies to make electric buses financially viable. For example, Shenzhen provided city-level subsidies in addition to the national subsidies, which made it 36% cheaper to own an electric bus than a diesel bus over its lifetime. In some cases, the city leased the buses rather than buying them outright to spread out the costs over the leasing period.
Many cities also developed creative strategies to optimize charging and designed operations schedules to compensate for the electric buses’ shorter ranges and recharging needs. In a few examples, charging infrastructures were built that could be shared with electric cars. As Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chengdu, Beijing and many other Chinese cities became electric bus leaders and the industry matured, the government gradually scaled down the subsidies.
Nearly 100% of city buses sold in China are now electric, an impressive accomplishment, but about half of its bus market is privately-owned coach buses — used for tourism, business and intercity travel. Only 6% of coach bus sales are electric. Coach buses travel longer distances, where the limited range and long charging times of electric buses can become more challenging. When looking at city and private buses together, since 2017 electric bus sales have plateaued at a little over half of all China’s bus sales.
For almost a decade, China’s total bus market has been shrinking. Fewer new buses may be needed because so many were deployed in a short amount of time. Also, car ownership has increased rapidly and China now has the world’s most extensive high-speed train network. The COVID-19 pandemic also had an impact — urban bus ridership still has not recovered to pre-2020 levels, and the economic impacts may have decreased city budgets.
Chinese electric bus companies, however, continue to show they’re a dominant force in the industry. The top 10 electric bus companies worldwide are all Chinese and China’s exports account for 30% of the electric buses sold in Europe and more than 85% of the electric buses in Latin America.
The Netherlands: An Early Leader in Europe
The Netherlands invested heavily in electric buses earlier than any other European country and now has more than 2,100 electric buses on the road.
In 2016, Dutch transit authorities set the most ambitious target in the world for all new bus sales to be zero-emissions by 2025, with the entire fleet to follow by 2030. The move, which was created as part of the Netherlands’ national climate plan to decarbonize transportation, triggered a rapid shift toward electric buses nationwide.
To facilitate the transition, public transit authorities gave longer contracts to the private electric bus companies that own and operate public transit buses in the Netherlands to help them recoup their investments (15 years instead of 8 to 10 years for diesel). Various cities and regions also provided financial support for the transition. For example, Amsterdam gave direct subsidies of up to 40,000 euros per bus (about $45,000 based on average 2019 and 2020 exchange rates — when the subsidies began implementation).
The country also used dynamic modeling to plan bus schedules and routes. In some cases, it also used opportunity charging systems that allowed for fast charging of the batteries during stops along the route.
After reaching more than 60% of bus sales, electric buses in the Netherlands fell in 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic caused financial constraints and supply chain bottlenecks, so many electric bus purchases were postponed. Today, the electric bus transition is still struggling due to overloaded electric grids and technical problems with charging. While the Netherlands has made impressive progress, it is in danger of missing its ambitious targets without making big investments in electric buses and supportive infrastructure.
The rest of the European Union has also been adding electric buses to its fleets. Electric buses increased from less than 2% of EU bus sales in 2018 to 19% in 2024. An important turning point came in 2019, when the EU adopted a Clean Vehicles Directive which set binding requirements for publicly-procured buses to be clean, with escalating targets as time goes on. Then in 2024, the EU released a target for a 90% reduction in city bus carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and a 43% reduction in coach and intercity bus emissions.
About 70% of the EU’s buses are manufactured by European companies, including MAN and Mercedes-Benz from Germany and Solaris from Poland. Chinese companies grew from 10% of the EU market for electric buses in 2017 to 30% in 2023.
Chile: Home to the Leading City for Electric Buses Outside of China
Chile has more than 2,700 electric buses in operation as of April 2025, the most of any country in Latin America, with about 2,500 in its capital city. Santiago now has the largest fleet of electric buses of any non-Chinese city, making up more than a third of its total fleet.
In 2017, Chile established a national electromobility strategy and in 2021, it announced a goal of 100% bus electrification by 2035. By 2023, 46% of the buses sold in Chile were electric.
The push to clean up buses in Santiago — one of Latin America’s largest cities and home to 40% of Chile’s population — began out of a desire to reduce air pollution and reduce health impacts; the city was one of the most polluted in Latin America in the 1990s. Since then, the national government has developed climate policy and started regulating vehicle emissions as part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce air pollution.
In 2017, as the city entered a bidding process to renew its bus fleet, Santiago became the first city in Latin America to adopt European standards for diesel buses. The new standards increased the cost of diesel buses which made electric buses more financially feasible. Santiago also required each of its seven bus operators to have at least 15 electric buses.
Rather than manufacturing its own electric buses, Santiago imported them from Chinese companies like BYD, Yutong and others. The initial rollout cost about $300,000 per electric bus — which is more than diesel models — but each electric bus is expected to break even or be more cost-effective than diesel buses over its lifetime due to lower operating and maintenance costs.
Direct government subsidies were not required to create the financial ecosystem that made the bus rollout possible, but city and national support was still needed — for example, by offering backup financial guarantees to private sector bus operators to incentivize investment. Bus operators, bus manufacturers and utilities partnered together to figure out viable financial and logistical options. Like in the Netherlands, bus operators receive longer contracts for electric buses than diesel buses to recoup investments.
To build on its success, Santiago will need to turn over the rest of its bus fleet quickly. And to meet Chile’s ambitious goals for electric buses, additional cities will need to follow its example.
Promising Developments in India and Other Countries
India is the leader in electric buses among lower-income countries. It has more than 10,000 electric buses on the roads, and in late 2024, the national government approved a multi-billion dollar initiative to incentivize the purchase of 14,000 more. India’s electric bus rollout is deliberately targeting many cities which don’t have any organized bus transport to expand mobility access.
The government has kept electric bus prices affordable by buying them in bulk, including one of the biggest mass purchases of electric buses in the world. The goal for 2027 is 50,000 total electric buses on the roads. Compared to the more than 2 million public and private buses on the roads in India, this will be only a small fraction of the total fleet, but still a substantial endeavor.
To meet its goals, India is developing new financial mechanisms. In India, city governments typically contract with private companies to own and operate the buses. The companies pay the large upfront cost for the buses, while the city pays the companies back over time. However, delayed payments from cash-strapped local governments can create challenges. In response, India has developed a payment security fund so bus operator companies can purchase electric buses with confidence.
Beyond India, there are a few more leaders in developing countries with some impressive plans in development.
- Colombia has a target for 100% of new public transport sales to be electric by 2035.
- Ecuador has a target for 100% electric new public transport vehicles by 2030.
- Jakarta, Indonesia purchased its first 100 electric buses and has a target to fully electrify its fleet of 10,000 buses by 2030.
- Dakar, Senegal has launched Africa’s first all-electric bus rapid transit system, expected to carry 300,000 passengers per day.
How Electric Buses Fit into the Transportation Picture
Electric buses are just one part of the story for decarbonizing road transport. Governments can follow the Avoid-Shift-Improve framework: First, plan cities in a compact and transit-oriented way so people can avoid lengthy trips; second, incentivize more people to shift from private passenger cars to walking, cycling or public transit; third, improve and optimize transport to be as efficient as possible. For motorized vehicles, this means electrifying not only buses but also passenger cars and heavy trucks, while ensuring the electricity comes from increasingly clean sources.
While buses are not the biggest contributor to carbon dioxide emissions in the transport sector, the transition to electric buses can lead to reduced climate change, healthier air, happier riders, less congestion and improved access to jobs and services for lower-income groups. Electric buses can also serve as a test case for other high-emitting vehicle types like heavy trucks.
Leading countries like China, the Netherlands, Chile and India prove that a rapid transition to electric buses is possible and desirable.
Data for electric bus sales, sales share and fleet size in this article are from the International Energy Agency’s Global EV Data Explorer, as of April 2025. Sales share data has been modified to include battery electric, plug-in hybrid and fuel-cell electric buses.
This article is part of a series of deep-dive analyses from Systems Change Lab examining countries that are leaders in transformational change. Other articles in the series analyzed countries leading on renewable power, electric vehicles, coal phase-out and coal cancellations. Systems Change Lab is a collaborative initiative — which includes an open-sourced data platform — designed to spur action at the pace and scale needed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C, halt biodiversity loss and build a just and equitable economy.