Empresa Municipal de Transportes de Madrid (EMT), the largest public transport operator in Spain and the second largest in Europe, recently awarded the tender for the acquisition of 520 new Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) buses for the years 2021, 2022 and 2023, as well for the purchase of 50 new electric buses.

As announced by the Madrid City Council last December, as of January 2023 the EMT will no longer provide service with diesel buses; its entire fleet will comprise electric, natural gas and hybrid buses.

The €151.5-million CNG bus award is divided among three vendors: 250 buses from Solaris Bus Ibérica; 170 buses from Scania Hispania; and 100 buses, to Evobus Ibérica with the Mercedes Citaro CNG model.

The delivery of the 520 buses will take place over three years: the first 190 buses of this acquisition will arrive in 2021, in 2022 another 200 buses will be added and in 2023 another 130 vehicles will be received.

This delivery schedule will allow the 383 diesel buses currently owned by the municipal company to be taken out of service. This year 250 will be removed and next year, the remaining 133.

Electric buses. The €25.9-million award for electric buses is split between two vendors. The first award for 30 standard electric buses went to Irizar with the Irizar ieBUS model. The second 20-unit batch was awarded to BYD Europe and its BYD model K9UB.

In addition to this tender, the EMT will add another 50 electric vehicles and six electric minibuses. With this new equipment, the EMT ZERO fleet will grow up to 179 units at the end of this year, yielding an electrification share of 8.6% for the EMT fleet.

The EMT bus fleet is one of the most modern in Europe, with an average age of 5.75 years.