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The electric bus boom is changing more than the vehicle fleet
In five years, the number of electric buses in Swedish urban public transport has increased from around 400 to 1,600. However, the transition is about far more than new vehicles. As public transport is electrified, procurement processes, the division of responsibilities and perceptions of which technical solutions are possible are also changing. This is shown in doctoral candidate Vendela Åslund’s thesis on the electrification of bus services in Sweden.
Electric buses have quickly become an increasingly common part of urban transport. Between 2020 and 2025, the share of electric buses in Swedish urban public transport increased from approximately 9 to 40 per cent of the fleet. At the same time, electrification has required entirely new parts of the public transport system to be developed, such as charging infrastructure, new approaches to service planning and new ways of handling technical and environmental requirements in procurement processes. In her thesis, Vendela Åslund, a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Engineering (LTH), Lund University, and K2, has examined precisely the interaction between electrification and the public procurement of bus services.
“Electrification has meant that new parameters and considerations have had to be included in the procurement of bus services. At the same time, there are clear frameworks and structures governing procurement processes, as well as norms relating to depot ownership, formal stakeholder roles and principles of fair competition. Together, these create a dynamic in which the transition to electric buses and procurement processes influence each other in turn, and it is this dynamic that is the focus of the thesis,” says Vendela Åslund, who has been able to follow the rapid emergence of electric bus services in real time over recent years.
Increasing standardisation
The thesis is based on interviews with stakeholders in the public transport sector, as well as analyses of procurements and procurement documents.
One of the clearest findings of the thesis is that both technical solutions and ways of working have become increasingly standardised during the transition. For example, slow charging at depots has become the new norm, compared with the earlier situation when opportunity charging was often used in several cities. This shift can be explained by rapid advances in battery technology, operational experience and limited space in urban areas. At the same time, greater public ownership of depots can now be seen, with depots often being leased to operators for the duration of a contract. This has been justified, among other things, by the need for long-term planning of depot investments and the need to ensure fair competition in procurement processes.
Once a particular technology becomes established, it also influences future decisions. Infrastructure built today needs to function for a long time, which means that subsequent procurements often have to adapt to existing systems. The thesis describes this as a development in which electrification both creates opportunities for change and simultaneously limits which technical alternatives appear realistic in the future.
A broader concept of sustainability
Improved climate and environmental performance have often been highlighted as the primary reasons for electrifying bus services. However, as electrification has been scaled up, Vendela Åslund has observed in procurement documents that other aspects of sustainability have increasingly received attention, including the environmental and social sustainability associated with vehicle and battery production.
“More and more procurement documents now include requirements relating to sustainable supply chains, traceability, the sustainability of raw material extraction and battery recycling. This in turn places new demands on the organisations responsible for carrying out procurements,” she says.
One thing that has surprised Vendela Åslund is how quickly the transition to electric buses has actually taken place. She describes an unusually strong consensus among stakeholders across the sector.
“There is broad agreement among stakeholders in the public transport sector that electric operation is both desirable and, in principle, inevitable. This differs somewhat from previous transitions to new fuels in bus transport, where the transition was more controversial,” she says.
Link to the dessertation:
Current change in public transport – public procurement and the transition to electric buses – K2
Text: Anna Maria Erling