Melodrama creates $100B market by 2025 for hybrid and pure electric buses says IDTechEx

By Dr. Peter Harrop, Chairman, IDTechEx

Buses are boring right? Not any more. Faced with 200,000 people dying of air pollution yearly and rocketing oil imports, China will make 10 million school buses and 1.6 million large buses electric. The resulting ultra-low-cost base will let its bus makers flood the world. Nonetheless, the emerging global market for hybrid and pure electric buses at over $100 billion yearly in 2025 will have much variety and opportunities for everyone. 

The new report, Electric Buses 2015-2025 from analysts IDTechEx makes it clear that, at over 20% of the total future hybrid and pure electric vehicle value market, the bus forecasts must be taken seriously by those seeking leadership in the market overall not just the rest of us that travel on the things. 

The report explains how the technology is completely changing so new suppliers will enter new value chains. For example, it looks at diesel versus regular hybrids, plug-in hybrids, fuel cell buses, and the pure electric battery and supercapacitor buses. 

It notes that a recent order for 2000 pure electric large buses and others at the thousand level sit awkwardly with the popular understanding that massive price and pitiful range make them little more than a distant dream. Uniquely, this report, replete with summary figures, diagrams, sales forecasts, and technology roadmaps makes the very latest situation and trends lucid. Only IDTechEx has globally recognized Ph.D. level analysts intensely travelling the world to do the research. Only this report is fully researched in 2014-5: vital given the rapidly changing league table of largest manufacturers and markets and the many new technologies. 

The report has many original, very detailed tables and figures and pages. It assesses over 100 bus manufacturers and over 140 manufacturers of lithium-based batteries. Fuel cell bus trials over the last 25 years and plans for them in future are examined in detail and conclusions drawn. Forecasts by technology, region, and bus size are given and both numbers and market values are forecasted. For comparison, figures for light commercial vehicles and large buses including conventional ones are given. A technology roadmap for 2015-2025 is presented for the first time. Interviews are reported from across the globe.