Chargers take the space that used to park buses: cabinets, dispensers, cable routes, the clearances around them, and the one-charger-per-bus layouts of a first roll-out. How many places a depot loses depends on its layout and its charging concept, and the number is counted in the Smartbus Ready assessment. The way back is on the bus side. The State of Smart Depots 2026 estimates that smartbuses, buses that drive themselves inside the depot without a driver, fit 10 to 15% more vehicles on the same site without physical expansion: they park close together, one behind another, in departure order, and re-park themselves when one blocks another’s exit.
Why electrification eats parking places
Most electrification plans start 1:1: the same blocks, the same number of buses, the same site. Then the chargers arrive. A dispenser stands where a bus stood; a cabinet needs a clearance; a cable route cuts a lane. A diesel bus parked anywhere, an electric bus parks where it can charge, so the overnight layout follows the chargers, and the places between them go unused. Add the clearances the fire brigade asks for and the lane a reversing bus needs, and a depot built for 100 buses holds fewer, on the same ground, with the same timetable to deliver in the morning.
How a smartbus uses the site
The driver leaves the bus at the depot entrance, so the parked bus needs no space beside it for a door to open and nobody has to walk between buses to reach the next one. Smartbuses park nose to tail, in the order they will leave in the morning, and when one blocks another’s exit, the blocking bus moves itself. Overnight, a smartbus repositions itself between charging positions and lines up for the first departures, so a charging place serves more than one bus a night. The same layout logic gives the fire scenario: SmartDEPOT™ is designed to move buses out of a danger zone on a predefined scenario, with no staff in the risk area.
Always in the right place at exactly the right time – full flexibility, smooth operations, optimal use of time and space. The layout constraints of a depot, the places lost to chargers, and the places a smartbus layout gives back are part of the Smartbus Ready assessment, the first step of the Smartbus Onboard Program: a site survey and data exercise in the operator’s own depot.
More on the depot as a system: Depot of the future. Where this stands today, with who is on board where: Where does depot autonomy for city buses stand in 2026?
Questions operators ask
It depends on the layout and the charging concept: dispensers and cabinets stand where buses stood, clearances and cable routes cut lanes, and one-charger-per-bus layouts leave the places between chargers unused. The Smartbus Ready assessment counts the places lost in the operator’s own depot.
The State of Smart Depots 2026 estimates 10 to 15% more vehicles on the same site with smartbuses, without physical expansion: buses parked close together, one behind another, in departure order, re-parking themselves when one blocks another’s exit.
The driver leaves the bus at the depot entrance, so a parked smartbus needs no space beside it for a door to open, and nobody walks between buses to reach the next one. Buses stand nose to tail in departure order, and a blocking bus moves itself.
A smartbus drives itself to its charging position, repositions itself between charging positions during the night, and lines up for the first departures in the morning, so one charging place can serve more than one bus a night.
Operators who want their own numbers start with Depot Minutes, a free online tool for depot time estimates, and the Smartbus Onboard Program, a site survey and data exercise in their own depot.
Smartbuses in every depot.