Istanbul will be one of the first major cities in the world to have a full electric bus fleet, top official of Municipal Bus Transport Authority of Istanbul (IETT) said in a written statement to Anadolu Agency (AA) on February 11.
“Istanbul’s IETT plans to establish a small fleet of electrical buses in 2014 as part of the institution’s 4E philosophy (Energy, Ecology, Efficiency and Economy),” IETT head Hayri Backali said while pointing to the worldwide trend towards environmentally friendly, less energy consuming vehicles with low operational costs.
Technically, electric vehicles give off no emissions and provide dramatic energy savings that amounts to almost one fifth of conventional gasoline vehicles. The disadvantage of an electric vehicle is its battery capacity.
“While choosing new busses for our fleet we gave priority to carbon emission values and energy costs,” the statement said.
According to IETT’s figures, the annual fuel cost of the current 3,086 vehicle fleet reached 323.3 million TL ($170 million) in 2013, amounting to 85.520.554 liters of fuel oil per year.
It seems that electric buses with one-fifth operational costs compared to conventional buses may save annually $136 million in Istanbul only. And saved cost is especially fine in a country which $55.9 billion of foreign trade deficit- $99.78 billion in 2013- is related to import of petroleum products.
