Why aren't electric buses more popular?

Turns out part of the answer is connected with procurement, namely the fixation on the sticker price vs a lifecycle costing analysis:

When cities decide to implement electric buses, Gorguinpour says the cities too focus too much on those upfront costs and not enough on the “life cycle cost.” That could mean delaying the the adoption process altogether or funding small pilot tests—sometimes  with just a handful of buses—without a larger plan to scale up. “We encourage cities to do whatever they can afford,” he says. “But if you’re going to get five electric buses in your city, you should work with a group of stakeholders to come up with a strategy, to say, ‘How am I going to learn enough from these five buses to construct a plan to get me to 500 or to thousands of buses?’”

More here.