BYD Unveils World’s Largest Battery-Electric Vehicle
BYD recently unveiled what is soon to be the world’s largest battery-electric vehicle at the 2014 American Public Transportation expo in Houston, Texas.
This biggest-ever EV has been tentatively dubbed “The Lancaster” — in honor of the Californian city where it was created.
To be clear here — so that you’re not imagining some sort of battle tank or something — this “biggest EV ever” is a 60-foot bus. Quite a large bus, but nothing that is unfamiliar to most city dwellers. It’s just a bus, when it comes down to it.
The said eBus can, reportedly — and quite impressively — travel 170+ miles with a passenger load of up to 120 passengers. Which makes it easy to assume that BYD will have no trouble finding a market for it.
A payoff for BYD certainly seems to be visible in the offering — which is a good thing considering that the project was developed over a period of almost two years
Sustainnovate provides more: “Chinese battery, automobile, and electric vehicle giant BYD — whose founder, chairman, president, and CEO won the Lifetime Achievement Award in the 2014 Zayed Future Energy Prize, has just unveiled the largest battery-electric vehicle on the planet. With the announcement also comes a challenge to transportation leaders to ‘step out of the dark ages’ and ‘be better stewards’ of our planet. You have to love that.”
“The consequences of our choices today will leave a legacy that our children will live with, both environmentally and economically, for decades into the future,” BYD Vice President Micheal Austin stated at the unveiling of the bus during a Houston, Texas, public transportation expo.
Interesting sentiment. Hard to say if it’s simply “sales talk” of one kind or another or reflects values held on a deeper level by Austin.
The company’s Fleet Sales Vice President, Brendan Riley provided a bit more information, stating: “BYD’s mission is to create safer and more environmentally-friendly battery technologies. This has resulted in the BYD Iron-Phosphate Battery, a fire-safe, completely recyclable, and incredibly long-cycle technology — the foundation of BYD’s Electric buses. These buses run entirely off battery power lasting up to 24 hours on a single charge, with single off-peak charging time of 2-4 hours. No additional generation capacity is needed to be built to charge our buses at night since the grid is only 40% utilized.”
“BYD claims that even after 10,000 charge cycles, the batteries maintain 70% of their initial capacity, allowing for a typical lifespan of about 25 years,” Chris adds on sister site GAS2. “Add to that extremely low operating costs (to drive 1,500 miles only cost testers about $200 worth of electricity) and you’ve got an extremely cost effective form of public transportation that gets continuously greener as the grid becomes greener too.”
For those interested, here’s the link to BYD’s press release.
Image Credit: BYD
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