Friday, 18 August 2023

Transdev To Spend £21 Million On 39 New Buses For Harrogate

Transdev operator The Harrogate Bus Company has placed orders worth £21 million for 39 new buses as it converts its entire fleet in the town to fully electric power.

The order includes 20 new Mercedes-Benz E-Citaro all-electric single deck buses, to be used on the operator’s busy urban route 1 between Harrogate and Knaresborough, route 7 linking Harrogate, Wetherby and Leeds, and rural route 24 between Harrogate and Pateley Bridge.

The current Volvo electric fleet was launched in 2018

There are also 19 new British-built Alexander Dennis Enviro 400EV fully electric double deck buses, to relaunch the 36 route linking Ripon, Harrogate and Leeds.

The orders are supported by £7.8 million of funding from the Government’s Zero Emission Bus Regional Areas (ZEBRA) funding, following a successful bid by partner, North Yorkshire Council.


It follows successful trials of several types of all-electric buses on three varied routes in and around Harrogate, and on The Harrogate Bus Company’s high-frequency Shuttle route linking Bradford and Keighley.

Henri Rohard, Transdev Managing Director, said: “In combination with our existing eight Harrogate Electrics-branded Volvo 7900E electric buses, the first of their kind in Britain, 47 fully-electric vehicles are now expected to be in service in Spring 2024.

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“Higher power output delivered by today’s new generation batteries means each bus can go further between charge-ups – and to make sure we provide a reliable service, our buses also have top-up chargers at Harrogate Bus Station, as they will travel further in a day than the maximum range currently achievable by fully electric buses.”

Launch of Volvo 7900E Electric Fleet in 2018 here