EMT Madrid orders more e-buses with BYD and Irizar

The public transport operator EMT Madrid has procured 50 more electric buses. The contracts have been awarded to the manufacturers Irizar and BYD, who are to deliver 30 Irizar ieBUS and 20 BYD K9UB respectively. Further orders are in planning.

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EMT already ordered a total of 55 e-buses from Irizar and 45 e-buses from BYD last year. In addition to the new orders worth 25.9 million euros, EMT plans to procure another 50 electric vehicles and six electric minibuses this year.

When all the ordered vehicles have been delivered, the EMT fleet will comprise 179 electric vehicles of various sizes. Despite this 3-figure number, it still only corresponds to an electric share of 8.6 per cent of the public transport provider’s fleet. EMT is the largest public transport operator in Spain and the second-largest transport company in Europe.

This also means that internal combustion engines are still used in the majority of the fleet, although increasingly less of these run on diesel. In the same tender as the 50 electric buses now on order, EMT also placed orders for 520 CNG buses. These are to be delivered in the next three years, replacing 383 diesel buses. The CNG buses will be supplied by Solaris, Scania and the Daimler subsidiary EvoBus. From 2023, the fleet is to consist only of electric, natural gas and hybrid buses.

Update 25 May 2021: BYD has now delivered the 30 electric buses ordered in August 2020 to EMT Madrid. Together with 15 previously delivered BYD electric buses, the above-mentioned 45 e-buses of the Chinese manufacturer are now in service for EMT in the Spanish capital. According to BYD, the 30 new e-buses could be transferred earlier than originally planned.

greencarcongress.com, emtmadrid.es (in Spanish), bydeurope.com (update)