Can public busses - which operate on Diesel in already heavily polluted cities - be switched to hydrogen?
More than 100 hydrogen buses are in operation today and have already delivered more than 7 million „passenger kilometers“. More are being produced and put in service every week, The main obstacles here is the cost efficient supply of green hydrogen. The central bus depot is normally a good location to have a single point of hydrogen production, but cost of electricity can still be a significant obstacle, as well as the supply of non-fossil electricity. Also there is a certain size dependency : small busses (10-20 seaters) are usually better off to just run on batteries. For 18 meter buses in a hilly environment hydrogen is the only viable choice. For normal sized busses both options have their merit, but in any case there is a need for a massive increase in numbers of busses produced to get the production price down in order to reach a critical level for TCO.