Fleet electrification specialist Zenobē has announced that it has partnered with the city of Brampton, Ontario to launch a CA$4 billion (£2.17 billion) effort to electrify the bus fleet of the city.
Zenobē will lead a coalition of partners in the UK and Canada, including investment bank TD Securities and several original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) based in Canada, to transition the Brampton Transit bus fleet to zero-emission buses. This is the first phase of what is set to be a decade-long electrification framework that will bring around CA$1 billion of international investment into Canada.
Yesterday (15 June), representatives from the UK and Canada, including British prime minister Kier Starmer, mayor of Brampton Patrick Brown, and Fouzia Younis, UK’s Consul-General to Ontario, met with Zenobē co-founder and director Steven Meersman in Ottawa, Canada, to discuss the partnership. The partnership will make use of resources from both nations, with Canadian suppliers set to supply the electric buses used for the transition and the UK supplying technical experience and expertise.
The first phase of the project will bring new buses to the streets from early 2027. The partnership is expected to deliver 1,000 new electric buses in total, enough to entirely replace the city’s current bus fleet of 473 diesel vehicles and add several hundred more new buses. Brampton is the largest suburb of Toronto, and Brampton Transit serves around 40 million passengers each year. Between 2022 and 2023, the number of users on the area’s transit network grew by around 31%.
Steven Meersman, co-founder and director of Zenobē, said: “We expect this will serve as a model for other projects currently under development.”
Zenobē first entered the Canadian market earlier this year, having announced in late April that it had provided a CA$48 million (£26 million) debt financing facility to 7Gen, a Canada-based EV-as-a-service provider; 7Gen has stated that it will use this financing from Zenobē to fund between 400 and 500 new commercial EVs as well as charging solutions, while also refinancing its current fleet.