BYD Co., Ltd (BYD) and Rotterdam Government have entered into a contract on delivering the first batch of all-electric vehicle BYD e6 as part of the green transportation project “75-EV-RO” in Rotterdam. The Netherlands Prince Maurits van Oranje, Mrs. A. van Huffelen, the Vice Mayor of Rotterdam, Mr. Henry Z. Li, the General Manager of BYD AUTO, and Mr. Zhang Jun, the Chinese Ambassador all presented the contract signing ceremony in Rotterdam City Hall.
The “75-EV-RO” project is a very significant step in building the new energy fleet in Rotterdam. The Rotterdam government aims to purchase 75 units of different types of new energy vehicles to team up a new energy fleet in Rotterdam. Through the project, not only the concept of electrified transportation can be popularized among the common people, but also the public concerns over vehicle safety, charging technology and local environment improvement can be better proved with the experience and data which will be collected.
Adopting BYD’s revolutionary “Fe” battery, the e6 is a 5-seatcrossover all-electric vehicle with 300kM range per charge. BYD e6 has been used as taxis in Shenzhen, China. The fleet of 50 e6 taxis has been in service in Shenzhen since May 2010, and the overall driving distance has surpassed 3 million kilometers by the end of April 2011. The successful operation of the e6 taxis in Shenzhen proved its reliable quality and gains precious data for the further popularities of EVs.
“We are very proud to be a part of the ’75-EV-RO’ project and we are very confident with the performance of our electric vehicles. Since last year, BYD has launched a number of EV pilot projects around the world. Through these operations, the company has accumulated a lot of experiences and collected many valuable data for the future development. We expect that our cooperation with Rotterdam government will be a big success”, said Mr. Henry Z. Li.
Mrs. A. van Huffelen said:” The Rotterdam Government has been committed to the development of cleaner transportation and aims to make Rotterdam a cleaner, greener and more healthy city of Europe. The ’75-EV-RO’ is one of the hybrid/Electric vehicle pilot projects that we have in hand. We are looking forward to testing the e6 and think the e6 is a great choice for this project.”