Veolia, the Finish public transport company, has inked a deal with BYD to supply electric buses to Espoo city, a suburb of Helsinki. 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."
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.