New, “Much Improved” BYD Electric Bus Gets First 15 Orders in France - by Zachary Shahan

As I just wrote in preface to a BYD electric truck story, among hardcore EV enthusiasts, BYD is well known as the world’s leading manufacturer of electric buses, and also as the leading manufacturer of electric cars in China.  Even back in 2013, the head of Barcelona’s transit agency told me that BYD’s electric buses (which it had been testing for a few months) were cost-competitive with conventional diesel buses on a lifetime basis.  The situation has only gotten better since then, and the last spreadsheet I saw on the matter made electric the obvious choice simply from a financial point of view.

There have been several trials programs with BYD electric buses in Europe, North America, and South America in the past few years (China is gobbling them up like they are french fries), and as far as I know, they’ve all gone well.  So, many readers and I have been wondering when we’ll start seeing big orders of the buses, but due to the slow nature of turning over bus fleets, we mostly see orders of a handful of buses at a time.

16 buses isn’t a huge order, and it’s not actually one order but several (from different operators), but it’s yet another sign that BYD is making critical inroads at transit agencies and convincing leadership that its electric buses are the best buses on the market for them.

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