• hissing meerkat
    link
    61 month ago

    New?! This is the original area in which China excelled at producing electric vehicles. London’s early electric buses were European licensed production of BYD buses (or more likely BYD licensed powertrains)

    Is China even allowing electric buses to be exported yet? The last time I looked it was still going to take over a decade to replace all the buses in China, but a chunk of a decade has passed since then.

    There’s an old report from New York City putting the value of an electric bus at about $1.2 million, mostly the health benefits from no emissions not fuel savings. At the time there was no way for New York City to buy them because there’s no way to fund transit out of healthcare when the state pays for one but not the other, there were no non-Chinese manufacturers, and then shortly after they couldn’t compete with London that valued an electric bus at £1.7 million if I remember correctly, and the UK could justify funding buses based on healthcare. I think those first buses were about €600k. At the same time kneeling electric transit buses in China were about $90k, and small electric buses were $30-$40k.