World's first electric double-decker to enter service in London later this year

The world's first purpose-built purely electric double-decker bus will enter passenger service in London this year, Mayor Boris Johnson has announced.

The trial to start in October was announced as bus manufacturers including BYD, Volvo, Wright Bus, Optare Mercedes Evo Bus and Alexander Dennis attended a Clean Bus Summit in the capital and commited to supporting cities to delivering fleets of new ultra-low emission buses. 

The Mayor said he has introduced 1,300 hybrid electric buses, retrofitted over 1,400 buses to reduce their emissions and developed his new Routemaster, "one of the cleanest double-deck buses of its type in the world," he claimed, as part of a plan to halve NOx emissions from the bus fleet from 2008 to 2016. He plans all 300 single-deck buses in central London to be zero emission at the tailpipe by 2020 and all 3,300 double-deck buses to be electric hybrid.

The Mayor said that many believed that a purely electric double-decker would not be possible due to the size of the battery packs required to power it, "but by working with BYD and utilising cutting edge technology London has been able to secure another world-first".