Electric busses cheaper than diesel

From Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF)

Air quality is a growing concern in many urban environments and has direct health implications for residents. Tailpipe emissions from internal combustion engines are one of the major sources of harmful pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and particulates. Diesel engines in particular have very high nitrogen oxide emissions and yet these make up the majority of the global bus fleet.

E-buses have much lower operating costs and can already be cheaper, on the basis of total cost of ownership, than conventional buses today. The TCO of all electric bus configurations that we modelled improves significantly in relation to diesel buses as the number of kilometers traveled annually increases. For example, a 110kWh battery e-bus coupled with the most expensive wireless charging reaches TCO parity with diesel bus at around 60,000km traveled per year (37,000 miles).This means that a bus with the smallest battery, even when coupled with the most expensive charging option, would be cheaper to run in a medium sized city, where buses travel on average 170km/day (106 miles).

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TCO comparison for e-busses and diesel busses with different annual distance travelled
Source: BNEF

TCO means total cost of operation.  For individuals, the "sticker price" of EVs is a negative, even though the total operating cost of EVs is lower than ICEVs.  But for car or bus fleets, the cost of ownership is converted into a monthly lease, and if the lessee is a government or semi-government body, the interest rate implict in the lease agreement will be low because of low risk of default. 

E-busses are already cheaper than diesel busses.   As battery costs decline this advantage will only get better.  And that's before we start in on air pollution.