Waterloo sunrise for BYD e-bus
BYD ambitions
Isbrand Ho, BYD’s General Manager, BYD Auto Europe
After the main launch event, I joined Isbrand Ho and his team at an informal press briefing at which he revealed more about BYD’s plans and took questions. The company is among the world’s largest manufacturers of rechargeable batteries, with 170,000 employees. Apart from buses, BYD produces taxis and fork lift trucks and is soon to launch a range of 1.5, 3.0 and 7.5 tonne trucks, as well as petrol, hybrid and fully electric cars. Turnover this year is expected to be €6billion.
BYD Europe’s headquarters have been in Rotterdam since 1999, as this was where it first imported its batteries through. The European office now employs 34 people, all but four of them Chinese, and the number employed is set to grow.
Building buses since 2003, they have tested the e-bus in European cities including: Paris, Bremen, Bonn, Madrid, Barcelona, Salzburg, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Brussels and Budapest. The biggest customer is BYD’s home city of Shenzen in China where 220 e-buses have worked since January 2011, covering more than 13 million miles with the air conditioning running and peak loads of 120 passengers.
Isbrand revealed that, having learned about the UK market’s needs, it had been decided not to handle it through BYD Europe but to set up a separate UK trading company. He claimed that the current cost of transporting vehicles from China equated to a quarter of their value, which seemed a little high to me, but his point was that if the numbers justified it, the company would look to set up its own UK manufacturing facility. The number mentioned was 100 units, which is presumably an annual figure. He indicated that this figure was now close, though I am not aware of the source of any other UK orders.
The plan is to keep developing the bus range in every way. One of the targets they have set themselves is to reduce the weight of the e-bus by around 700kg to a figure of 13,100kg.
I referred earlier to my feeling that the body styling and construction lags behind that of European manufacturers, something Isbrand alluded to when he said, ‘We realise from a coachbuilding perspective that we are still learning from our competitors. We think in our battery technology we are leading.’ He ruled out neither acquiring another coachbuilder (having previously looked at Optare before it was acquired by Ashok Leyland) nor partnering with one for the market. ‘We need to build the right model for the right market,’ he said.
Continuing on the theme he said, ‘I believe buses need to have character and right now our buses maybe lack that. Yes, we have electric propulsion but what about three years down the road when others may have caught up. We are talking to Universities about that.’
Leasing
Isbrand Ho recognised that the ability to lease vehicles is important and some current players in the leasing market are hesitant about the risks, especially given the decision to withdraw the entire Citaro articulated fleet early. He commented, ‘leasing can be a barrier with anything new. That is what we are seeing right now. To overcome the problem, BYD is talking to the Bank of China about extended credit, one of the things that will be on the agenda when CEO, Wang Chuan-Fu, visits in February.
Support
Backing up its products in the UK would be its own resident engineers. There would also be its UK partners, EvoBus, servicing the two Go-Ahead buses, and a spare parts operation would be established in order to ensure three to four hour delivery. Most of the stock inventory would be held in the Netherlands but there would also be an inventory held in the UK.
The vehicles would be monitored by means of downloads, there was no remote monitoring capability at present.
New products
A considerable number of new vehicles are under development to broaden BYD’s offering, several of which are designed to meet the needs of specific markets. We were shown pictures of the K10 three-axle double deck design that has been built in conjunction with KMB in Hong Kong. Two examples were said to be running in Hong Kong.
There was to be a 10.2m design as well as 7.0m and 8.0m buses. There was interest from Israel in the 8.0m long K7 or 6800LZEV model which had dual doors and Cooltek air conditioning as a replacement for Mercedes-Benz minibuses.
In South America, where BRT systems are increasingly popular, a three section high floor BRT with high level doors has been developed and an 18m low floor articulated bus would be delivered to Barcelona by December 2014. Other models will follow.
The company also has ambitions in the London taxi market. It was currently putting in six electric charging stations and by the end of 2014 it would have 200 with multiple guns as a result of a joint venture with an, as yet, unnamed partner who would manage the network using 100% BYD technology. ‘It is important to have the infrastructure for taxis so that they can charge at will without going back to the depot,’ he said.
Last word
Already BYD has over 4,000 bus orders for 2014, most of them admittedly in China. Isbrand Ho suggested that now was what he termed ‘the Kodak moment’ when Europe’s leading manufacturers had to decide whether they were serious about going down the electric road. He understood that those who had invested heavily in diesel wanted to sell what they had, but then Kodak had decided to stick to producing film in the face of the digital revolution. ‘If you don’t have the right battery, you don’t have the right bus’, he said.
I’m sure I won’t be the only one keen to know exactly how these two new buses get on.