Spanish city scraps €38m plan to buy 35 new hydrogen buses after court intervention
New mayor says Tarragona will instead spend the allotted cash on a mixture of H2, battery-electric and biogas buses
The Spanish city of Tarragona has cancelled plans to buy 35 hydrogen-powered buses after a court ruled that the initial tender was flawed.
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The move was heralded by then EMT president Jordi Fortuny as “a new paradigm shift in public mobility… [and] an important turning point in the direction towards the city’s decarbonisation objectives”.
However, the tender only attracted one applicant, and another company focused on hydrogen supply company appealed against the decision to hold only one tender for both buses and supply.
Following this ruling, the new mayor — Rubén Viñuales of the Socialist Party of Catalonia, who took office in the city in June 2023 — decided that the plan to buy 35 new hydrogen buses would be shelved.
Instead, the €38.2m will now be spent on “various operations to renew and decarbonise a fleet [of 77 buses] that is too old”, according to local newspaper Diari de Tarragona.
“As many cities already do, we will bet on a hybrid mix of hydrogen, [battery-] electric and biogas buses,” said Viñuales, the newspaper reports.
The Catalan-speaking city actually introduced its first three hydrogen buses in November last year, which were supplied by Portuguese manufacturer Caetano.
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