Demystifying Auckland’s electric buses: Your questions answered!

Which route is next… electric double deckers… electric Northern Express… retrofitted diesels…. Your electric bus questions answered!

Earlier this week AT and Kinetic officially opened the recently electrified New Lynn depot, and NZ Transit Buzz attended the opening. There were lots of high-viz vests and speeches and there were performances by a local school and NZBus/Kinetic staff before the ribbon was officially cut. 

But before all that NZ Transit Buzz author Grady Connell gathered some of your questions from Twitter/X about Auckland’s electric buses and put them to Auckland Transport. 

A question that is on everyone’s mind is which routes are next on the list to be electrified.

There are more electric buses coming to the New Lynn depot next year. They will operate on a variety of routes, including Route 22 which will become a fully electric service.

Christian asks: Any word on the electric double-deckers?

Our first electric double-decker will enter service in the coming months. This will also be based at the New Lynn depot.

Julie asks: Does every operator now have some electric buses in their fleet?

Auckland Transport has several trial electric vehicles which we have been able to rotate through operators, so every operator has had the chance to test electric vehicles. Including these trial vehicles right now - every operator has at least one electric vehicle in their fleet.

Corey asked: How long until the whole fleet is electric?

Our Low Emission Bus Roadmap sets out our pathway to a fully zero-emission fleet by 2035.

Bryce asked: When are the NX services going electric?

We don’t have any date for this yet.

Jeff asked: Seating capacity seems to be less per bus & seats seem to have less padding is this so?

The seating capacity aligns with the latest version of the Requirements for Urban Buses.

In the capital we have seen bus stop chargers buses to top-up mid-route without having to come back to the depot, We asked AT if we are going to see something similar.

Yes. We already have top-up chargers installed at the Manukau Bus Station and Albany Bus Station. There will be others installed at Panmure Station and on Quay St in the central city later this year.

Tranzit Group has retrofitted electric bus setups in their existing fleet are we likely to see any retrofits to the existing fleet?

This is something being considered.

We have all had that grungy smokey old diesel bus before, We asked AT if they are replacing the oldest diesels first.

In general, yes, though it depends on a range of things such as length of contract and expiry dates.

As the old buses are replaced by the electrics what is happening with the old buses?

These are owned by the bus operators rather than Auckland Transport, so it is up to them to decide the future use of these vehicles.

Speaking generally, we’ve noticed that operators will sometimes retain some displaced buses in Auckland for use on non-AT charter or school services, and on special events and rail replacement services.

We are aware that buses will also be cascaded to other uses elsewhere in the country.

 In moving to such uses, they will mostly displace older vehicles that have previously been doing this work, and they will generally be of a better emissions standard than the vehicles they are displacing. 

These other uses are also usually less intensive than the urban work in Auckland that they previously did (e.g. a school trip twice a day vs up to 18 hours of use on the road on urban services).

So, while we are most focused on the fleet operating on our contracted services, the places older buses exiting our fleet go to will also lead to positive outcomes.