BYD Electric Bus demo at Metrotown today
BYD Electric Bus demo at Metrotown today
****This event has just been cancelled due to a mechanical problem with the bus. :( It may be rescheduled for tomorrow. I’ll update this post as soon as more information is available.****
This is a little late notice (sorry, I just heard about it myself!), but I thought I’d let everyone know about the BYD Electric Bus demo at Metrotown today. The Coast Mountain Bus Company regularly tests different buses and this one seems pretty cool! It will be at the Metrotown Bus Loop between 3p.m. and 3:30p.m today. It would be great to see Buzzer blog readers there! I’ll be there taking a few photos of the bus. Here’s the specs:
39’4” long
100” wide
Maximum 60 passengers
100% electric drive, in-wheel motors, proprietary “iron phosphate” (Fe) batteries.
Range: 250-300km.
Top speed: 96km/h.
Charge time: a full charge takes 6 hours.
Air Conditioning
Front, center, and rear passenger doors.
Solar panels are integrated on the roof to generate some electricity.
I’ve been told that BYD is located in Shenzhen, China, and started business in 1995 as a battery manufacturer. They are currently one of the world’s top four battery manufacturers and are #4 in Chinese car sales. Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway owns 9.9% of BYD. Also of note, the bus is currently configured to a Chinese specification, and has some missing equipment: no bike rack, no wheelchair ramp, inadequate space for wheelchairs. It is equipped with window curtains!
Let’s buy Canadian please. There are some of the best bus companies in the world located in our own country.
anychance will this bus on displayed again?
New Flyer buses are way better(and headquartered in Manitoba by the way)
That actually looks like pseudo-futuristic design
Why would this even be considered? a range of 300km?? how far does the average bus travel in a single day in Vancouver? Surely it’s more than that.
Here’s an update on the bus everyone: Unfortunately the BYD bus left Vancouver on Saturday :( Parts needed to be shipped from China for the repair.
Nick: Here’s the answer to your question from CMBC: Most of our daily bus routes are under 300km/day. High-usage buses generally only accumulate ~80,000km/year, with an average bus accumulating around ~65,000km/year, which works out to roughly 200km/day. I should note that this BYD bus is not being contemplated for procurement in the near future, but I imagine that we’ll eventually (a decade from now?) be getting battery-electric buses.
Sad to hear this. But this bus is just not very “Vancouver-able”: it’s too long, with too little passenger capacity. In short,It’s a electric “tour” bus.
It’s a 40 foot bus, the same length as any other bus, and as it is right now we’re hard pressed to fit 60 passengers in our D40LFs and LFS 40 footers anyway.
This bus is also a little narrower that equipment on the road. Standard size for a Canadian transit bus is 102\ A 2 inch difference is negligible, but I just thought I’d note it. From a drivable perspective, its totally \Vancouver-able\.
Ya its too long and its difficult to manage. But why the passenger capacity is too low. http://bit.ly/19zvfJ0