3 months after fire, Chapel Hill brings back electric buses, though not all of them
Chapel Hill Transit will soon put seven of its 10 remaining electric buses back on the road, three months after the 11th bus caught fire and was destroyed.
The Chapel Hill Fire Department determined that the fire started in the batteries as the bus was parked in a lot at the agency’s headquarters off Millhouse Road on Dec. 10. No one was on board, and no one was injured.
Exponent, a private engineering consulting firm, is doing more detailed work to determine why the lithium-ion batteries caught fire. Until that is complete, three buses with batteries made by the same manufacturer will remain parked as a precaution, according to Chapel Hill Transit.
The other seven buses contain batteries made by a different company. They were deemed safe after “thorough and rigorous safety inspections,” said Chapel Hill Transit Director Brian Litchfield.
“I promised our team that we would not return these buses to service until they were safe for my family to ride on and safe for our team and customers,” Litchfield said in a written statement. “With the finalization of the additional safety inspections, I’m confident that these buses are ready to roll again.”
All 11 of the town’s electric buses were made by California-based Gillig. The company is paying for the outside investigation of the fire and has agreed to replace the damaged bus at no cost to the town.
The insurance value of the destroyed bus was $1,098,089, according to town spokesman Alex Carrasquillo.
Chapel Hill Transit has 82 diesel buses, which were enough to maintain service after the electrics were taken off the road, Carrasquillo said.
The town received its first electric bus in 2021 and has seven more on order.
This story was originally published March 3, 2025 at 2:55 PM with the headline "3 months after fire, Chapel Hill brings back electric buses, though not all of them."
