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Zero-emission bus procurement has moved beyond the stage where battery-electric and hydrogen fuel-cell buses should be treated as two parallel technologies waiting for the market to decide between them.

Transit agencies have now spent years operating both, rebuilding depots, installing charging and refuelling infrastructure, training technicians and discovering which assumptions survive daily service.

Both technologies can move passengers without tailpipe emissions. The more useful evidence now comes from what agencies are prepared to buy repeatedly and at fleet scale.

I assembled a global procurement register with 388 sourced records across 81 countries, separating firm orders and awards from tenders, options, framework quantities and funding announcements.