From 40 red SkyBuses shuttling passengers to and from Melbourne Airport a decade ago, it has grown to 12,000 buses, a global footprint and more than a billion passenger trips a year in the UK today.
Sewards says that transition has started and the coming five or 10 years will see it rolled out more widely. He says electric bus range depends on topography and climate. Electrifying those depots can be tricky. For example, where does the power come from? It should be a big opportunity; as we said, Kinetic’s buses burn 40 million litres of diesel a year and soon enough the plan is to have most of that energy coming from the grid via utilities.Kinetic will operate Melbourne’s bus network until June 2031, under a contract that started in June 2022. It is Kinetic’s largest contract by kilometres travelled each day.