USDOT Announces $2B in Grants for Transit Buses, Favoring Hybrids Over Electric Options

The new round of grants for buses and facility upgrades doesn’t include any for battery-electric buses, favoring instead diesel-electric hybrids and CNG buses.

1 minute read

November 26, 2025, 6:00 AM PST

By Diana Ionescu @aworkoffiction


Blue clean-energy hybrid gas-electric bus in New York City.

Karolis Kavolelis / Shutterstock

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) is awarding more than $2 billion in grants to 165 transit agencies for new buses and bus facility upgrades through a bus and bus facilities and the low-emission and zero-emission buses (“low-no”) grant programs. 

According to an article by Jeff Davis for the Eno Center for Transportation, “The funding, provided by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, is the fiscal 2025 funding for the program plus another $525 million taken from the fiscal 2026 advance appropriation, which became available on October 1.”

Davis notes that while the amount for bus funding has stayed the same since the Biden administration, the emphasis of the low-no program has shifted to support hybrid vehicles over battery-electric buses. “The new grant list has, near as we can tell, zero battery-electric bus grants.” The grants were awarded to proposals for diesel-electric hybrids and compressed natural gas (CNG) buses.

Friday, November 21, 2025 in Eno Center for Transportation

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