BYD Co., Ltd (BYD), a leading-edge provider of green energy technologies based in Shenzhen China and Veolia Transport Finland Oy, a public transport operator that is setting the standard of innovative and sustainable mobility solutions in Finland, announced today a partnership to operate BYD’s electric bus in a world-class test bed for electric buses in Espoo city, part of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, the capital of Finland. This unique project gathers together major Finnish public transport and technology players - Veolia Transport Finland Oy, Espoo city, VTT, Helsinki Regional Transport Authority, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (TEKES), Ministry of Transport and Communications and Ministry of Employment and Economy – to make the BYD eBUS-12 the first pure electric city bus in Finland.
As part of the agreement, Veolia Transport Finland will conduct real operations with BYD eBUS-12 in Espoo for three years. The Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT) will take the role of monitoring and measuring during BYD eBUS-12’s daily operations, so that EV buses can be verified as one of the key solutions for Veolia Transport Finland to ensure sustainable mobility solutions for the future.
Henry Li, Senior Director of BYD stated: “BYD is thrilled to partner with Veolia Transport Finland Oy to demonstrate this significant project in Finland, which gives BYD an opportunity to prove that our EV technologies are feasible and reliable even in such harsh climatic conditions. BYD eBUS-12 has proven to be a product that not only can significantly reduce pollution in large cities, reduce the operating costs, but also can provide great comfort to the passengers. We believe that this project in Finland will be a big success.”
“Given challenging climatic Finnish conditions, we are honored to cooperate with BYD, which has already created the largest EV bus fleet in the world, to bring the first electric city bus to the Finland. Our temperature variations during the year are from -30 to +30 degrees Celsius. If that can be handled accordingly, we are confident that electric buses can replace diesel or gas buses and realize real zero-emissions in the future in Finland”, said Sami Ojamo, Development Director of Veolia Transport Finland.
The BYD eBUS-12 is able to run 250 km (155 miles) on a single charge in urban conditions, and its energy consumption is less than 130 kWh per 100 km. The core technology of the BYD eBUS is BYD’s self-developed Iron-Phosphate or “Fe” battery technology. The “Fe” battery boasts the highest safety, longest service life and most environmentally-friendly rechargeable chemistry (containing no heavy metals or toxic/flammable electrolytes). The BYD eBUS-12 is now in regular passenger service in four cities in China including Shenzhen, Changsha, Shaoguan and Xi’an. The accumulated mileage of the eBUS in Shenzhen alone has reached over 3.2 million kilometers (or 2.0 million miles) achieved by the end of January 2012. Recently, Shenzhen City announced it will add 1000 more BYD electric buses to its public transportation fleet, already the largest zero-emissions fleet in service world-wide.