Busworld 2025 May Signal the End of Range Anxiety for Public Transport

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The cavernous halls of Brussels Expo will be humming with electric energy next week, and it won’t just be the charged atmosphere of Europe’s premier bus and coach exhibition.

At Busworld 2025, the industry’s electric revolution will reach a decisive inflection point, with manufacturers set to unveil vehicles that will finally answer the question that has haunted fleet operators for years: can electric buses truly go the distance?

The answer, set to be displayed across gleaming chassis and sleek coach designs throughout the venue, will be a resounding yes. CleanTechnica is set to visit the show if a visa is issued quickly enough. Meanwhile, I compiled this story from information from BusWorld 2025 participants.

The long-range breakthrough

What will set Busworld 2025 apart from previous editions won’t just be the number of electric vehicles on display — it will be their ambition. Where earlier electric buses were confined to predictable urban routes with frequent charging opportunities, this year’s showcase will reveal vehicles engineered for the open road.

Volvo Buses will throw down the gauntlet with its BZR Electric coach chassis, a modular powerhouse that will house up to 720 kWh of battery capacity. The numbers will be staggering: 700 kilometers of range, enough to connect major European cities without a charging stop. For an industry that has watched electric aviation promise similar breakthroughs while struggling with physics, Volvo’s achievement will represent a tangible victory over the tyranny of the kilowatt-hour.

MAN Truck & Bus will match this ambition with its debut MAN eCoach, the company’s first foray into fully electric touring coaches. Drawing from MAN’s eTruck battery architecture, the eCoach will target 500 kilometers of range — a figure that would have seemed fantastical just five years ago. The company won’t be stopping there; its refined Lion’s City 12 E city bus will claim the same 500-kilometer range, demonstrating that efficiency gains are cascading across entire product lines.

The Asian vanguards

While European manufacturers will focus on proven lithium-ion chemistry pushed to its limits, Asian companies will be betting on next-generation technologies. BYD’s presence at Busworld will carry particular weight, not just for the company’s market dominance but for its bold showcase of solid-state battery technology that will be integrated into a European-spec city bus.

Solid-state batteries remain the industry’s holy grail — promising higher energy density, faster charging, and improved safety compared to conventional lithium-ion cells. While commercial deployment remains years away, BYD’s demonstration vehicle will offer a tantalizing glimpse of what’s possible when chemistry catches up with ambition.

The global nature of this transformation will be further emphasized by VinFast’s calculated European debut. The Vietnamese giant’s two electric city bus models, designed specifically for EU compliance, will signal that the electric transition has transcended regional boundaries.

Similarly, Chinese manufacturer Yutong, a stalwart at the show, will showcase its European-homologated EB 8 and EB 12 electric buses, demonstrating how the world’s largest bus manufacturer is adapting its technology for European markets. When companies from Southeast Asia and China are engineering vehicles specifically for Brussels’ strict regulatory environment, it will be clear the market has achieved truly global scale.

The supply chain revolution

Perhaps the most telling sign of the industry’s maturation will be the sophistication of component suppliers exhibiting alongside vehicle manufacturers. This won’t just be about swapping diesel engines for electric motors — it will be about reimagining every system that makes a bus function.

Kiepe Electric’s new eDrive unit will represent the kind of integrated thinking that electric vehicles demand, combining motor, inverter, and transmission into a cohesive system designed for maximum efficiency. Meanwhile, ZF’s latest electric axle will demonstrate how traditional automotive suppliers are evolving their expertise for the electric era.

These components will tell a story of supply chains reorganizing around electric propulsion, with decades of diesel expertise being rapidly translated into electric competency.

The business of going electric

The real test of Busworld 2025’s electric showcase won’t happen on the exhibition floor — it will unfold in depot yards and boardrooms across Europe. The concurrent Zero Emission Bus Conference, running October 7–9, addresses the operational realities that determine whether these impressive vehicles succeed or fail in service.

Topics like battery degradation modeling, depot electrification costs, and route optimization algorithms might lack the visual appeal of a gleaming new coach, but they represent the unglamorous engineering that will determine the pace of fleet electrification. The conference serves as a necessary counterbalance to the exhibition floor’s optimism, grounding breakthrough technologies in operational reality.

Hydrogen stage

While battery-electric vehicles will dominate the exhibition floor, Busworld 2025 will also showcase the maturation of hydrogen fuel cell technology. Solaris, fresh from its Urbino 18 hydrogen winning the prestigious “Bus of the Year 2025” award, will present three zero-emission vehicles, including the debut of its compact 10.5-meter electric bus and its proven hydrogen fuel cell models that offer up to 350 kilometers of range with rapid refueling capabilities.

The hydrogen showcase will demonstrate that the zero-emission future isn’t monolithic — different routes and operational patterns will require different solutions, and fuel cells provide the quick refueling and extended range that some operators demand.

The momentum becomes unstoppable

Busworld 2025 isn’t just the proliferation of electric public transportation buses — it’s their normalization. Electric buses are no longer experimental curiosities or compliance exercises. They’re sophisticated machines designed to handle the full spectrum of public transport demands, from dense urban networks to intercity connections.

The transformation on display represents more than technological achievement; it signals a fundamental shift in how the industry approaches zero-emission mobility. Range anxiety, once the electric vehicle sector’s defining limitation, is being systematically eliminated through better batteries, smarter energy management, and more efficient drivetrains.

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I am planning to be in Brussels during one of the press days of BusWorld 2025, but because of visa delays, I will be reporting from the final days of the event. Though, I may be able to catch up with the Zero Emission Bus Conference from October 7 to 9, 2025.