Australia just built its first electric bus, and it looks awesome!

Bring on sustainable public transport.

The first electric bus to be designed, engineered, and manufactured in Australia has just been unveiled, and it looks surprisingly slick.

Created with the help of researchers at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, the bus is controlled by touch screens, can carry more than 50 passengers, and features leather-look seats that come with their own USB-charging dock. Um, yes please!

But aesthetics aside, the zero-emission bus could also be a big winner for the environment if charged using renewable energy sources, such as solar- or wind-generated electricity.

The world has been slow to master the challenge of large electric vehicles over the past decade, due to the size, weight, and cost of the battery required to run them. But we’re starting to see a turnaround, with the UK also announcing their first fully electric double-decker bus earlier this week. 

What’s unique about the Australian model, which is being called the eBus, is that it's been designed with the clever people of the future in mind, by allowing batteries to be retrofitted into the system as cheaper and lighter technology comes on the market.

"This was a key aspect to achieving product life-cycle cost savings," Ajay Kapoor, Swinburne's Dean of Engineering, told the press. "On average, the electric bus will be 80 percent cheaper to maintain than the diesel buses currently being driven in Australia."

The team also integrated the touch-pad system into the design to help save charge by allowing a computer system to carefully control how much electricity is being used. "We developed high and low voltage electrical systems for the bus, including the design architecture for electrical circuit motor controls, supervisory control and other control systems to ensure the most efficient operation for the electric bus," said Kapoor.

The eBus, which is a collaboration between Swinburne, transit company BusTech, manufacturing research centre AutoCRC, and the Malaysian Automotive Institute, will be trialled on routes in the Gold Coast in the coming months before going into mass production.

For now, the prototype, which has a range of 200 km, will be charged back at the depot in between trips. But the developers hope that in the future, charging stations could be installed around cities to help support an electric public transport system.

Although the Malaysian government has already signed a AUD$170 million deal with Bus Tech to purchase the electric buses once they're ready, there's no word yet on whether Australia will follow suit and buy into the technology.