Researched and written 17 October 2026. Sources are listed at the end.
The competition Coventry won
In January 2021 the Transport Secretary named Coventry as the winner of a Department for Transport competition to make it one of the UK's first all-electric bus cities. The government put £50 million into the scheme, administered through Transport for West Midlands, with the aim that every bus would be battery-powered by 2025.
The project covers routes inside the city boundary and those that run in from neighbouring areas. Operators committed £73 million on top of the government money, the West Midlands Combined Authority £15 million and Warwickshire County Council £5 million.
The fleet so far
National Express Coventry, part of Mobico Group, took its first ten battery-electric double-deckers in August 2020: Alexander Dennis Enviro400EVs, part-funded by a £2.2 million government grant along with chargers at the Coventry depot. In January 2022 it ordered 130 more. Deliveries began that November and finished in September 2023.
Papers prepared for a West Midlands Combined Authority board meeting on 14 November 2025 counted 204 electric buses out of a city fleet of 269. That makes Coventry's one of the largest fully electric urban bus fleets in the country, with lower local carbon emissions and quieter streets as a result.
Why the finish line moved
The remaining diesels were 33 single-deckers run commercially by National Express West Midlands, 17 on Transport for West Midlands contracts, 13 on Warwickshire County Council contracts and two on a Homes England service. National Express's 33 electric replacements are expected in service during 2026. Getting them running includes securing a lease from the city council on land next to its depot and installing the equipment there.
New Transport for West Midlands contracts start in July 2026, using diesel buses at first but requiring electric ones by the end of the year. Warwickshire's contracts began in January 2026, with electric buses due by July. The combined authority moved the overall finish to the end of 2026, citing the economic shocks since the money was awarded and uncertainty over how the network would recover after the pandemic. The Department for Transport called itself supportive of the change.
Getting around by bus
National Express Coventry runs a network of frequent urban corridors, orbital routes and longer links into Warwickshire, reaching Kenilworth, Leamington Spa and Bedworth. Its X1 runs between Coventry and Birmingham. A network review in 2012 introduced colour-coded route branding on maps, timetables and the buses themselves.
For guests that usually means a quiet, battery-powered ride into the centre for shopping, a match or a night out without worrying about parking.
From the houses
All four of our homes are in Stoke, on the east side of the city. The city centre is about 2 miles by road from the nearest, the railway station about 2 miles and University Hospital Coventry about 2 miles. Each house also has free parking for anyone who brings a car.
Sources: route-one.net/news/coventry-all-electric-bus-city-rollout-completion-set-for-end-of-2026; Wikipedia: National Express Coventry. Distances by road from each house, worked out on OpenStreetMap.
