Dive Brief:
- Seattle will become the first city in North America with double-decker electric transit buses using inductive wireless charging, the Pennsylvania-based wireless electric vehicle charging supplier InductEV announced Tuesday.
- The Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority, known as Sound Transit, has ordered 48 electric buses, including 15 60-foot articulated electric buses and 33 double-decker buses from Alexander Dennis, a subsidiary of NFI Group.
- Sound Transit will become the seventh transit agency in Washington state to deploy electric buses using InductEV’s wireless charging technology. Indianapolis and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, also run electric buses with the company’s wireless charging system.
Dive Insight:
With more than $20 billion in grants available for bus purchases and supporting infrastructure through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, orders for zero-emission transit buses by transit agencies jumped 66% in 2022 over the previous year. But the transition to electric buses requires more than placing an order. Agencies must plan ahead for charging the vehicles at the bus depot, along the route or both.
“Traditional depot-style conductive (plug-in) charging requires significant upgrades to grid capacity, including adding substations, which is expensive and takes years, while slowing the growth of electric vehicle adoption,” said M. David Dealy, president and chief commercial officer of InductEV, in an email. “On-route wireless charging offers many advantages including easier electricity provisioning, no extra real estate, use of lower-cost renewable energy for charging and smaller batteries that need no replacement or recycling.”
The electric buses will rely on 13 300-kilowatt in-ground inductive chargers. Wireless charging is over 20% more cost-efficient than wired charging and 30% to 50% more cost-efficient than diesel, Dealy said.
To be delivered in 2026, the double-decker buses will serve a new bus rapid transit route that Sound Transit is developing along Interstate 405 to connect communities around Lake Washington and to the agency’s light rail network.
“The order was placed after we completed extensive route mapping exercises in conjunction with Sound Transit, using automotive-grade modelling to fully understand the operational requirements,” Vice President for Alexander Dennis in North America Stephen Walsh said in a statement.
The regional transit agency already operates a fleet of 50 Alexander Dennis battery-electric double-decker buses out of Everett, Washington, which Sound Transit says are popular with its passengers.
