Minsk hosted the international industrial exhibition Innoprom Belarus from September 29 to October 1, 2025. In a video segment about the event shown on the program Contours on ONT on October 5, correspondent Natallia Petkevich described Belarus's technological achievements:
"First and foremost, Innoprom is, of course, about business. But it's also that very opportunity to assess the country's technological evolution, where classic tractors have turned into energy-intensive computers, buses with the prefix 'electro' hold a third of the global market, and massive dump trucks can be controlled remotely like toys."
Electric buses account for about 6% of bus sales worldwide. That means, according to Petkevich, Belarusian electric buses should hold a significant share of this market. But as WTF journalists found out, this is not the case.
In Belarus, "buses with the prefix 'electro'" are manufactured by MAZ JSC — the managing company of the BELAVTOMAZ holding — and BKM Utility Equipment Works JSC. Minsk's transport network operates more than 1,000 buses. About one in 10 is electric. And that's 5% of Minsktrans passenger transport. Two cities in Belarus have switched to electric transport: Žodzina and Shkloŭ. Žodzina has 14 electric MAZ buses, Shkloŭ has 15 Alhierd buses from Belkommunmash. By year's end, Navapolatsk will also transition to electric buses.The city will launch 26 Vitaut buses from the same Belkommunmash manufacturer. In other cities, electric buses are few and far between. Across all of Belarus, there are fewer than 200 electric buses.
We assumed Petkevich might have meant the Russian market. But last year, sales of electric buses of all brands in Russia totaled just over 1,000 units — that's 5% of buses purchased, and only 2.5% of those were made in Belarus. This means Belarusian electric buses don't even account for a third of the Belarusian and Russian markets, let alone the global market.
The largest battery bus manufacturers are considered to be Chinese companies BYD, Yutong and Higer. In Europe, besides Chinese brands, German Mercedes and Irish Wrightbus are popular.