City of Guelph receives first electric bus

The City of Guelph's first electric bus arrived in January 2023. (Twitter/Cam Guthrie)

The City of Guelph’s first electric bus has arrived.

On Friday, the city shared a photo of the bus on social media, announcing its arrival.

In a tweet on Monday, Guelph Mayor Cam Guthrie said the bus came from Nova Bus, a company that provides sustainable transit solutions, and three move buses are coming to Guelph next month.

Guthrie posted a video of himself, along with city staff members and employees from Nova Bus riding the bus.

“This is going to be a big game changer for transportation in the city but also helping to reduce those greenhouse gas emissions, as well. A lot of that in our city is from public transportation, so by replacing that we are pretty excited,council is pretty excited, and I’m hearing good things for the city as well,” said Guthrie.

This is the first of four electric buses ordered by the city. The other three are expected to be deployed this spring, according to the city.

“We are very excited to be delivering the first of what will be four in the initial order of buses to Guelph Transit,” Michael Coote, regional sales manager for Nova Bus said in the video. “We have three more that will be following this.”

Coote went on to say that depending on the operating cycle, the bus has 564 kilowatt hours available.

“In some of the modelling that Guelph Transit has done, a conservative range would be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 300 to 350 kilometres,” said Coote.

As for charging, according to Cootes, if the battery is fully depleted it only take three hours to reach a full charge.

He added that conditions such as a full bus, hazardous weather and heavy HVAC operations may bring this range lower.

A City of Guelph staff member said in the video, there will be less maintenance with an electric vehicle.

The move to electric buses comes as the City of Guelph looks to reach a 100 per cent renewable energy target by 2050.

“In an ongoing effort to use 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050 and to meet race to zero targets, the city has already replaced 44 fleet vehicles with fully or partially electric drive units, including three ice resurfacers at indoor arenas,” the city said in a news release.

This is the first of four electric buses ordered by the city. The other three are expected to be deployed this spring, according to the city.

A date the bus will hit the roads was not given, nor when the next electric bus is scheduled to arrive. The city did say more information about the pilot electric buses will be shared in the weeks ahead.