Throughout August, the Madrid Municipal Transport Company (EMT) has added to its bus fleet the latest CNG-powered models that will circulate through the Spanish capital. The four newly arrived standard vehicles are part of the largest CNG bus tender carried out to date by the municipal company, which has incorporated 520 vehicles of this type in 2021, 2022 and 2023. The next tenders will focus on buses hydrogen and electric.
Since the first CNG vehicles were purchased 29 years ago to this day, the urban bus fleet in Madrid has experienced, in the words of the Urban Planning, Environment and Mobility Delegate Borja Carabante, “an evolution towards sustainability and respect for the environment”, in a clear commitment by the City Council to “make mobility green” and its consequent improvement in the “quality of life and air in the city”, a “pillar of present and future Madrid.”
The 20 CNG vehicles that have arrived in Madrid in recent weeks are from the manufacturer Solaris, a modern standard bus with a maximum power of 320 CV and 2,000 rpm. This model is equipped with two 24 V batteries and a total of five CNG cylinders with a capacity of 315 liters each. Inside, the vehicle has two 29” ultra-panoramic screens and a double platform.
Its capacity is 27 seated passengers and 73 standing, in addition to enabling four ´jumbo´ seats. Due to the characteristics and demands of a city like Madrid, the life cycle of these natural gas buses is around 10 years of operation.
In 2020, the EMT carried out the largest CNG bus tender in its entire history. The 520 natural gas buses were part of the Madrid City Council’s commitment to achieve maximum decarbonization of urban public transport.
It was about completing the objective of having a 100% clean fleet circulating through the streets of Madrid, equipped with the technological innovations offered by the current market, one of the key goals within the Madrid 360 Strategy and a basic pillar in the Plan Strategic of the EMT until 2025.
The search for increasingly sustainable solutions for a city the size of Madrid brings with it a historic investment of 534 million euros between 2021 and 2025 by the Madrid City Council in mobility. This amount is added to the 77.34 million already invested in 2020 for the acquisition of new sustainable buses.
The entire municipal fleet is made up of 2,038 buses, of which 1,811 are powered by CNG (88.9%), five are plug-in CNG hybrids (0.24%) and 222 are 100% electric vehicles (10.9%). The EMT fleet has an average age of 4.55 years, which makes it the youngest in Spain and the second in Europe, behind Berlin
Source: Madrid City Council
