The urban landscape of São Paulo is changing: battery-powered electric buses are increasingly common on the city’s avenues. Green and silent, there are 820 of them in circulation, or 172% more than at the end of last year.
Preferred by drivers and passengers, they reduce air and noise pollution and are part of a trend in municipal passenger transport. But if in São Paulo the transformation is clear, in other capitals the transition is slow: in second place in the ranking is Belém, with 42 battery electric buses, followed by Goiânia, with 17, and Aracaju, with 15.
The price of these vehicles is approximately three times higher than that of a similar diesel vehicle, which, at first glance, can discourage the purchase and requires the installation of powerful chargers in garages. On the other hand, they are cheaper to operate: electricity costs are about a quarter of the cost of diesel used in a combustion vehicle, and they have a useful life of 15 years, five more than traditional vehicles.
A survey by the Brazilian Electric Vehicle Association (ABVE), the source of the above data, shows that São Paulo currently has 78% of the country’s battery-electric buses. Other major cities, such as Salvador, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte, do not have them.
What was it like in São Paulo?
The development of electric buses in São Paulo relies on a combination of emissions reduction standards, political decisions and support from development banks, notably BNDES.
The first rule providing for the decarbonization of the municipal fleet was the Climate Change Law, approved in 2009, which stipulated that by 2018, no buses in the capital São Paulo would run on fossil fuels. An ambitious objective, but which never saw the light of day: in 2018, the law was updated and the new objective became 2038.
In 2019, under the administration of João Doria, the city hall launched a new call for tenders for municipal public transport and included the decarbonization requirement in the contracts. And in 2022, under the government of Ricardo Nunes, a regulation prohibited system operators from purchasing new combustion buses.
Even with all these rules, it was still unclear how the transition to electric buses would be financed, and it was difficult to involve network operators in the transition.
The town hall pays the difference in value
The financial question began to be resolved in 2023, when the town hall launched a policy aimed at subsidizing the purchase of electric buses by operators. Instead of each company seeking its own financing to purchase battery-powered vehicles, the municipal government itself obtained low-interest resources from development banks and used them to cover the price difference between diesel and electric models.
To make this possible, the city hall obtained 6 billion reais in financing lines from BNDES, Banco do Brasil, Caixa, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank and the Bank of China.
As it is ultimately the council that pays for the costs of the bus system not covered by ticket revenue, financing at lower interest rates leads to long-term savings for the system itself – as well as reduced costs through replacing diesel with electricity.
The capital of São Paulo was the first city to receive BNDES support in this regard, with funding approved in October 2023. In November 2024, during an event at the Palácio do Planalto on the federal bank’s investments in mobility in São Paulo, Nunes posed for a photo alongside President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
But there have been setbacks in the process. “There was a lot of resistance, which is natural when you break a trajectory already in progress,” Flávia Consoni, professor at Unicamp and specialist in public policies on electric mobility, explains to DW. She mentions that operators claimed that there was not enough domestic production of electric buses, while car manufacturers responded that what was lacking was demand.
It also reports delays and problems in the installation of battery chargers in garages, which depend on high-power connections to the electricity grid, under the responsibility of the Enel concessionaire. Result: buses are sometimes parked in garages due to lack of sufficient energy to recharge them, a problem which is gradually being resolved. To help overcome this problem, the city plans to install large batteries in garages to increase the predictability of vehicle charging.
Although São Paulo accelerated the transition this year, the Nunes administration fell short of its own goal of adopting electric buses in 20% of its fleet by the end of 2024, or about 2,400 vehicles. Including trolleybuses, powered by overhead electric cables, the city passed the thousand bus mark at the beginning of November. The goal is now to reach 2,200 electric vehicles by 2028.
Cities in learning
Iêda Oliveira, coordinator of the Heavy Vehicles Group of the ABVE and director of Eletra, a Brazilian manufacturer of electric buses, believes that the experience of São Paulo is part of a “learning movement” of public managers and municipal bus companies.
Financing opportunities are increasing. BNDES continues to launch notices of support to municipalities and metropolitan regions and has become the largest financier of electric buses in Latin America. During COP30, held in November in Belém, the federal government announced the creation of a new fund, made up of public and private resources, to support the purchase of 1,700 electric buses.
Many Brazilian cities have expressed interest in receiving financing to purchase vehicles, but Unicamp’s Consoni warns that this process requires preparation to avoid the problems encountered in the case of São Paulo.
“It’s not just about exchanging one technology for another, you have to mobilize a series of services, qualify maintenance personnel, talk to the energy sector,” he says. Among other initiatives, she cites a project by the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) that supports five Brazilian capitals and metropolitan regions with consulting services to prepare tenders and promote adaptations necessary for the adoption of electric vehicles.
Models may vary
And there is no single recipe for all cities. Consoni cites the case of São José dos Campos, which wants to replace its entire fleet of 400 buses with electric models by September 2026 and received the first five vehicles in October, under a different model: the city of Vale do Paraíba chose to hire a company that will rent the buses and another that will operate the system. The call for tenders only resulted in the sixth attempt, due to a lack of qualified and interested companies.
Porto Alegre received authorization from the municipality in November to benefit from a loan of 448 million reais from BNDES for the purchase of 100 electric buses and the installation of charging stations, thanks to subsidies to operators.
ABVE’s Oliveira reports that until recently, entrepreneurs who operate municipal buses were reluctant to transition because they were unaware of the costs and procedures involved. Today, especially after the São Paulo experience, she says they have realized that electric vehicles can stay in service longer than diesel vehicles and allow for more scheduled maintenance. “Today we have practical proof of the benefits of this technology,” he says.
She also sees potential for industrial development in this transition, as Brazil has a clean energy matrix, one of the world’s largest electric motor factories, WEG, a trolleybus tradition and one of the largest municipal bus fleets in the world. “We have the conditions to be leaders in this energy transition,” he says. The company she works for, Eletra, currently has 64% of the national electric bus market and estimates that Brazil will have the largest fleet of this type in Latin America by the end of 2026.
Capital plans
DW asked the ten most populous capitals how many battery-electric buses they operate today and what their plans are for the coming years. Besides São Paulo, three responded.
In Salvador, there are eight electric buses and the city is preparing a credit operation from the World Bank to purchase 100 additional vehicles. The local government hopes that at least 50% of the BRT Salvador fleet will be equipped with zero-emission buses by 2028, and that by 2023, 40% of its fleet will be powered by low-emission vehicles.
In the Federal District, six electric buses are in service and the goal is to have 90 by the end of 2026, already purchased. The new vehicles are manufactured by the Chinese company CRRC. The first bus from this batch is expected to enter service in January and the rest will arrive in March.
In Recife, no battery electric buses are in operation. The local government says it has launched studies aimed at decarbonizing the fleet, but so far there are no plans for the adoption of battery-powered electric buses.
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