One Chinese City Has More Electric Buses Than All of America’s Biggest Cities Have Buses
Electric buses are being rolled out in Shenzhen, China on a massive scale. BYD
Connecting state and local government leaders
The transition away from transit powered by fossil fuels is happening at a slower pace in the U.S. and Europe.
China is racing into what it calls its “new energy” future, the country’s term for electric-powered vehicles, and last week Shenzhen completed its transition to all-electric buses. The city’s electric fleet now dwarfs the number of buses, both conventional or electric, in top U.S. metropolitan areas, reports CleanTechnica.
Shenzhen’s transport commission said on Dec. 27 that it had transitioned its 16,359 buses to all-electric models. The city’s 17,000 taxis are next (63 percent of them are already electric). China chose the city as a pilot for electric transit in 2009 , now intends to expand the effort nationwide.
China has relied on its home-grown electric vehicle manufacturer BYD to roll out its electric vehicles. The company has about 20 percent of the Chinese market .
China has relied on its home-grown electric vehicle manufacturer BYD to roll out its electric vehicles. The company has
Cities and fleet operators are going all electric fast because the economics become more attractive the bigger the fleet. A typical passenger car in the U.S. might burn a few hundred gallons of fuel per year, but buses, garbage trucks, and cargo trucks consume thousands of gallons of diesel and incur heavy maintenance schedules. Higher upfront costs from batteries are typically offset within a few years by lower maintenance (fewer moving parts, no internal combustion engine) and lower fuel costs.
The transition is happening at a slower pace in the U.S. and Europe. Los Angeles’s Antelope Valley Transit Authority aims to be the first all-electric public transit fleet in the U.S. by buying 85 electric BYD buses over the next five years. Southern California’s Foothill Transit will be fully electric by 2030 . Seattle is buying 120 new electric buses over the next three years. London’s black taxis, owned by the Chinese automobile Geely which also owns Volvo, plan to go electric as well.
Michael J. Coren is a reporter for Quartz, where this article was originally published.
NEXT STORY: Virginia Beach Is Using an IoT-Enabled Sensor Network to Predict Flooding in Real Time