3 Hurdles to Electrified Urban Transportation —and What We Can Do About Them

Last month, the Department of Energy (DOE) released the Urban Electric Mobility Toolkit, a comprehensive document aimed at helping cities and states plan, build, and finance electrified urban transportation. That’s everything from electric bus fleets to e-scooters and bikes, a new class of transportation dubbed “micro-mobility.” The toolkit, which pulls together hundreds of tools and references, is an incredible resource—I recommend everyone in the transportation industry, or anyone who cares about the quality of life in their city, to check it out.?

Among other things, the toolkit lists the myriad reasons to believe in electrified transportation. Among them are: cleaner air, especially for traditionally vulnerable and disadvantaged communities; more jobs to manufacture all those electric buses and e-bikes and to build and install all of the municipal charging infrastructure required to power them; quieter streets, since EVs produce significantly less noise than ICE vehicles; and in the case of micro-mobility, the democratization of transportation, less congestion on roads, and fewer lots used for parked cars. It’s a pretty picture.?

And it’s not a fantasy: cities nationwide are taking steps toward fully-electrified transportation. In 2019, the City and Council of Denver adopted new building codes mandating all new homes to be equipped with electrical equipment to simplify future EV charger installation. The same year, Seattle’s City Council amended its land-use legislation, which now requires new buildings with off-street parking spaces to offer electrical power outlets. New York City is electrifying its public buses and has a plan to build e-bike and scooter charging stations, and San Francisco, in Zum’s backyard, is currently deploying in-motion charging (IMC) trolleybuses, which charge through overhead catenary cables while they’re moving—something I didn’t know until I read this article!?

Of course, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. We’ve done things the old, fossil-fueled way for a very long time, and changing that will require a tremendous effort. After reading through the toolkit, and based on what I’ve seen as CEO at Zum, here are the three primary hurdles to electrified mobility:

1. Grid infrastructure — If we’re going to get around on electric scooters, bikes, and buses, we’re going to need chargers. Those chargers, in turn, have to be plugged into the grid. That means our municipal, city, and state grids will need significant upgrades to handle the increased loads. On-site (distributed) power sources may be viable in some cases, but for the most part, we’re going to need significant infrastructure investment, which will fall largely on utilities—large, unwieldy entities traditionally resistant to change.?
2. Public adoption — Assuming we’ve acquired the electric scooters and bikes and buses and have the infrastructure in place to charge them, we’ll still need people actually to use them. New technology always has an adoption curve—it took nearly 50 years for people to be comfortable getting into an elevator without a human attendant. It will take less time, but we’ll see the same happen with driverless vehicles and, to a lesser extent, electric ones. Nonprofits, corporations, property owners, developers, and local organizations will all have to do their part to encourage community adoption of these e-mobility devices.?
3. Funding — Finally, there’s the question of money. All of these e-buses and bikes won’t come cheap, and if anything can stop a project in its tracks, it’s a high sticker price. Budgets everywhere are tight, and transportation officials may hesitate to shell out for new buses when the old ones “work just fine.”?

Thankfully, some of the country’s best and brightest are tackling these issues. A local utility is supporting Austin’s increasingly electric bus fleet, cutting-edge companies like Tesla are making EVs cool, and Biden’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law contains billions of dollars in funding for EV charging infrastructure. Still, we all have to pitch in. At Zum, we’re actively working to cross each of the hurdles listed above:

1. Grid infrastructure — Over the next several years, Zum will fully transition our internal combustion buses to EV fleets. That will mean thousands of electric buses nationwide, all equipped for bidirectional charging—V2G. With all of our buses returning clean power to the grid during peak hours, we’ll significantly reduce peak demand and minimize the need for fossil-fueled backup generators. As a transportation partner, we materially boost a city’s grid resilience—critical if you’re trying to limit infrastructure spending while maintaining reliable power for all residents.?
2. Public adoption — One of the things we’re proudest of at Zum is our cutting-edge routing software. Cities that partner with us benefit from more efficient bus routes, shorter rides for students, and fewer buses on the road. Parents, kids, drivers, and school administrators all love the Zum experience—and that’s before we’ve electrified. Electrifying our buses will be a cherry on top of Zum’s already best-in-class transportation experience.?
3. Funding — Ah, yes. Funding. The million-dollar issue. Thankfully, the wind is at our back here, too. Under Biden, there are significant sources of funding for electrified bus fleets, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA), which provides grants and rebates to school districts seeking to lower greenhouse emissions, as well as the Clean School Bus Program (CBS), which offers $5B over a five-year period to replace existing school buses with zero-emission models. This makes the shift from internal combustion to EV buses viable and attractive. The real kicker, though, is that because we’re able to sell energy back to the grid through V2G charging, Zum actively helps our school district partners save money, money that can then be spent where it’s supposed to—on our kids.?

The future of transportation is e-mobility. It may seem daunting, but with the DOE’s toolkit and all of us working together, we can achieve fully electrified urban transportation. And we need to—because the climate crisis isn’t getting any less severe.?

Do you manage the transportation for a municipality, city, or state? Are you trying to decarbonize your community, particularly its transportation? If so, let’s talk. Zūm is growing quickly, and we’re here to help pave the road to e-mobility one city at a time.