BYD from Shenzhen in China is one of the world’s two largest manufacturers of electric buses. It is “fighting” with its Chinese competitor Yutong over who can be number one in the world when it comes to who has delivered the most electric buses to date.
BYD is originally a company in the electrical industry. The day came when they realised that the products they were making could also be used to equip electric cars. And true to the saying that the complicated thing about a vehicle is the drivetrain, while “anyone can build the body”, BYD began to put its own cars, lorries and buses on wheels. With good success: only recently, BMW gruop CEO Oliver Zipse said that BYD had long been on the same level as the Europeans in terms of quality.
BYD can now report a major export success: 55 battery electric buses of its “BYD eBus-15” type are being delivered to the “Metrobús” BRT system in Mexico City. The three-axle, 15-metre-long low-floor buses have two double-width doors and can carry 130 passengers. They are intended for use on Metrobús Line 4, which is 35 kilometres long, serves 40 stops along the way and carries around 120,000 passengers a day. Metrobús Mexico expects that the use of these new BYD buses will prevent 5,845 tonnes of CO2 from being blown into the air each year – replacing the diesel buses with EURO 5 engines that have been used to date.
The BYD vehicles have a battery capacity of 300 kWh, which gives them a range of 200 kilometres. According to BYD, it only takes three hours to fully recharge the batteries.
The cars are labelled “soy eléctrico” in large letters. Which simply means: “I am electric.”
More information about electric urban transport in Mexico City in our report here:
https://www.urban-transport-magazine.com/en/trolleybus-light-rail-and-cableway-in-mexico-city-the-new-ste/
