First Glasgow, three Stagecoach subsidiaries, McGill’s Bus Service and new start Ember Core have been awarded £40.5million from the second round of the Scottish Ultra-Low Emission Bus Scheme (SULEBS) towards the purchase of 215 battery-electric buses, 172 of them BYD/ Alexander Dennis battery-electric single- and double-deckers to be built at Alexander Dennis’s Falkirk factory. The operators are investing over £80million of their own funds.
£24.3million is going to First Glasgow, which is investing a further £35.6million towards the purchase of 35 Enviro200EV single-deckers and 91 Enviro400EV City double-deckers to be delivered by December 2022.
These are in addition to a 22-vehicle order for 11.6m 40-seat Enviro200EVs part-funded by a £3.87million grant from the first round of SULEBS (Scottish Column, November), which are due to arrive in Glasgow this year in time for the COP26 United Nations climate change conference, scheduled to take place in the city from 1 to 12 November.
Charging facilities for them have already been installed at its Caledonia depot as part of an earlier project which included the introduction of two similar buses at the start of 2020, giving the company experience in operating electric buses.
