Clean Transport

Published on July 1st, 2020 | by Zachary Shahan

0

Chile Orders 150 Electric Buses From BYD!

July 1st, 2020 by Zachary Shahan 

Miami, where you at? NYC, where you at? Chicago, where you at? Los Angeles, where you at? Chile just order 150 electric buses from BYD to transport people around its capital city of Santiago. Yes, 150!

New electric buses in Santiago, Chile. Image courtesy BYD.

This brings BYD electric buses up to a total of 455 in Chile. Furthermore, Santiago alone plans to get up to nearly 800 electric buses by the end of 2020.

According to Wikipedia, Red Metropolitana de Movilidad (RED), the public transportation system of the greater Santiago metro area, operates 7,060 buses, meaning it hopes to get to an approximately 11% electric bus share by the end of the year.

New electric buses in Santiago, Chile. Image courtesy BYD.

Santiago intends to have its public transportation system fully electric by 2040. I’d bet a nice chunk of cash that it will be fully electric far before that.

RED got its first 100 electric buses in December 2018, and then added another 200 in June 2019. Getting up to 800 in two years is quite rapid growth for this sector.

If you’ve been following CleanTechnica for a while, of even just a week, you know that BYD is a global leader in electric bus sales. It leads South America in this sector, by far, and is one of the top sellers in North America and Europe. Naturally, it sells many of its electric buses in China, and its home city of Shenzhen has had a 100% electric bus fleet by the end of 2017, with 16,359 electric buses in the city — more than the 5 largest North American bus fleets combined.

In 2018, CleanTechnica interviewed BYD Chairman, CEO, and Founder Wang Chuanfu in Shenzhen. The insights gathered then are as relevant — or more — today. And no doubt about it, electric buses are the future — but they should be a much bigger part of the present as well.

Electric buses in Shenzhen, China. Photo by Kyle Field/CleanTechnica.

Latest CleanTechnica.TV Episode

Latest Cleantech Talk Episode

Tags: BYD, byd electric buses, Chile, China, electric buses, EV procurement, Santiago, Shenzhen, Wang Chuanfu

About the Author

Zachary Shahan is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA] — after years of covering solar and EVs, he simply has a lot of faith in this company and feels like it is a good cleantech company to invest in. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort on Tesla or any other company.

Related Posts

Elon Musk Talks Tesla AI Chip, Autonomy Level 5, Accessing The Vector Space In Your Mind, & More →

Tesla Model 3 Sales Surge Ahead In China →

BMW’s Electrification Strategy Slides Forward →

DiDi Launches Robotaxis →