The City’s Urban Mobility Directorate, together with the University of Cape Town, will in the coming months undertake research to test and understand how electric buses will operate as part of the City’s MyCiTi bus fleet. The electric bus (e-bus) research is funded by the City of Cape Town and through a grant from the Urban Electric Mobility Initiative (UEMI). The agreement between the City and the eBRT2030 Consortium, the UEMI implementing agent, can now go ahead after the Mayoral Committee has given its approval at its meeting earlier today.

The City, together with UCT, has applied to the eBRT0230 for EUR90 000 grant funding to undertake the MyCiTi electric bus (e-bus) project. The grant is supplemented with a contribution from the City and will be used to test the operational impact of e-buses before the electric bus fleet is rolled-out on routes along the metro-south east corridor in 2027/28.

• The research project involves up to four 12 metre electric buses that will be deployed along various MyCiTi routes in Cape Town, with the first bus to arrive in the first quarter of the new financial year, if all goes as planned.

The intention is to test the e-buses on as many of the existing MyCiTi routes as possible for a period of about 12 months to determine how the buses perform on different route profiles; how long the batteries last once charged; and the impact of passenger numbers, the route profile and climate on the battery discharging; how long it takes to charge the batteries; and so forth.

Another key aspect of the research relates to maintenance and operational costs of an electric bus fleet – some countries operating e-buses have noted a reduction of up to 70% in operating costs.

‘We are grateful that the Mayoral Committee has given us the go ahead to sign the agreement with the eBRT2030 Consortium to participate in this programme. The research is critical as we need to understand how the electric buses will perform in our local context, and what challenges we need to take into account before we roll-out the e-bus fleet in 2027.

‘All of this information will assist us in planning better, and to be prepared in terms of the logistics and other needs such as the training of the bus drivers, maintenance requirements, passenger loads, fault reporting, and so forth. In fact, all over the world, countries undertake a pilot before the roll-out their e-fleet. UCT is our partner in this. They will lead the feasibility study and research components of the eBRT2030 project, as well as the additional monitoring and evaluation. We get the benefit of the research and we can then apply the outcomes in our planning,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Urban Mobility, Councillor Rob Quintas.

The City will sign the grant agreement with the Urban Electric Mobility Initiative (UEMI), the contracting entity acting on behalf of eBRT2030, which is funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe programme.

The research project will continue until at least December 2026 and may be extended to June 2027 with UEMI’s approval.

The City intends to roll-out an electric bus fleet along the MyCiTi routes that operate in the metro-south east, including the new routes that will form part of Phase 2A. The first e-buses will start operaring by 1 July 2027, and transport passengers between Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha, Wynberg and Claremont, as well as the Cape Town CBD.