Building dreams: BYD predicts all-electric by 2020

Chinese electric bus specialist BYD is predicting new vehicles for city bus fleets may be 100% electric as early as 2020.

On a visit to the BYD headquarters in Shenzhen, the company’s CEO Wang Chuanfu told Bus & Coach Buyer that Chinese cities faced parallel problems; in the case of Shenzhen, with buses forming 2% of the vehicles in the city but producing 30% of the PM and NOx pollution.

Speaking to Founding Editor Stuart Jones, Mr Wang said: “By 2020, and possibly as soon as 2019, we will see all fossil burning buses disappearing in China.” It was, he said, “a big mistake to keep tendering for diesel buses. Some tenders are for 12 years. If they make a mistake today they will suffer for a long time.”

BYD (Build Your Dreams) has already put 20,000 electric buses on the road. One of China’s industrial giants, it has almost a quarter of the global energy storage market and it the world’s biggest iron phosphate battery maker.

Mr Wang is also promoting investment in Skyrail, it’s column-supported monorail system, which it says is a fifth the cost of underground rail; already, seven Chinese cities are looking at Skyrail, and two are committed to building a combined 300km of monorail.

BYD’s commitment to the European market is underlined by the opening in April of a new factory in Hungary building 200 buses and coaches annually, and another similar unit in Beauvais, France – both capable of more than doubling production capacity. In the UK, though, the current supply of BYD drivelines to ADL will continue.

Bus & Coach Buyer also visited Chinese operators with BYD product… and got there by electric coach.

• Want to know more about the electric coach? Read our full report next week, showing how China is leading the way with electric vehicles… including SUVs.