Chile Orders 150 Electric Buses From BYD!

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.