Phoenix to sell its only hydrogen bus after fuel infrastructure fails to materialise
City bought New Flyer fuel cell bus in 2024 but never found a hydrogen supplier. It now plans to sell the $1.5 million vehicle to Santa Clara, California at cost.
Phoenix is selling the only hydrogen fuel cell bus it ever bought - having never put it into service - after infrastructure plans collapsed and Biden-era grant funding was cut.
The city purchased the New Flyer Xcelsior CHARGE FC bus in 2024 as a pilot for what was supposed to be a six-bus hydrogen fleet, part of a $16.4 million award from the Federal Transit Administration under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The original deal was scaled back to a single vehicle after Phoenix realised it had no way to fuel it.
"During that time, there were plans of their companies being here that would provide fuel, hydrogen fuel, but because there currently isn't for X amount of reasons, we just don't have the infrastructure to provide hydrogen fuel for our bus," Carmen DeAlba, a representative from Phoenix's Public Transit Department, told local news outlet KJZZ. The bus has been sitting in a secure lot, unused, ever since.
Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego blamed the collapse on policy shifts in Washington. "There was, several years ago, huge momentum for hydrogen fuel in Arizona, incredible economic development announcements in the hundreds of millions of dollars," she said. "With the change in Washington, D.C., many of the announcements have since decided they will not go forward."
She is likely referring to Fortescue, the Australian mining and energy company that cancelled its $550 million Arizona Hydrogen project in Buckeye last July, citing a "shift in policy priorities away from green energy" in the United States. The 158-acre site, which would have produced 11,000 tonnes of liquid hydrogen annually, had broken ground in May 2024 but never progressed beyond early site works. Fortescue is now seeking to have the site rezoned - removing stipulations that restricted it to hydrogen production - to allow development of a data centre instead.
The Phoenix City Council has unanimously approved the sale of the bus. According to the Public Transit Department, Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority in California has expressed interest and is expected to pay the full $1.5 million purchase price. VTA has decades of hydrogen bus experience, having operated fuel cell demonstrations since 2005, and recently secured $20 million in federal funding to modernise its fleet and restart hydrogen fuel cell bus operations.
Phoenix, meanwhile, says it will focus on battery electric and hybrid vehicles. "We can revisit it always later on," said DeAlba. "But for now we're more focusing on those battery and hybrid buses."
