Shenzhen – In a world’s first, the Chinese city Shenzhen is expected to electrify 100 per cent of its public transit bus fleet by the end of the year. Shenzhen began adopting electric buses in 2009 under a national electric vehicle strategy.
Shenzhen is on track to achieve a global milestone: it is set
to become the first city in the world to boast a fully electrified
public transit bus fleet – all by the end of 2017. As CityFix
reports, Shenzen is already home to
the world’s largest fleet of electric buses, with around 14,500
e-buses at the end of May.
Located in southeastern China immediately to the north of Hong
Kong, Shenzhen began adopting electric buses in 2009 under a
national EV programme that challenged ten cities across China to
deploy at least 1,000 EVs each year for three years. Since then, it
has brought even more electric buses into its own fleet by pursuing
various policies and targets that support the EV industry.
Unlike other cities and municipal bus operators around the
world that have been reluctant to adopt electric buses out of
concerns over high capital costs or uncertainty about battery
performance, Shenzhen adopted several different business models to
offset these risks, according to the article.
For example, it experimented with different leasing mechanisms
for buses and batteries to avoid long-term lock-in, and also
distributed operational risks among the different stakeholders,
including bus operators, bus manufacturers and utility
companies.
To address battery range and charging issues, Shenzhen Bus
Group – one of the three major bus operators – charges buses
between driver shifts or overnight at depots. It also developed a
charging station that can connect four buses at a time.