International and European Legislation and Standards for Battery Electric Buses

Abstract

The European Union is pushing forward its European Green Deal where sustainable mobility is one of the main areas of interest, especially after the COVID-19 crisis. The role of battery electric buses (BEBs) in public transit is key to achieve sustainable mobility and to reduce city pollution and greenhouse gas emissions and, therefore, global warming. Standardization plays a key role to ensure the deployment of a safe, cost effective, energy efficient, sustainable BEBs fleet. Standardization of components, interoperability, generalized recharge possibility, and even the possibility of using the BEBs as controllable loads, with energy storage that can be returned to the grid, must be done. This paper presents the most relevant legislation at European level, the International and European standardization outline in the field of BEBs, and the most important standardization activities going on. It gives references to deal with the very high number of standards relevant for the BEBs and the related activities that are in constant update, from different standardization entities.