Movia, the largest public transport company in Denmark, and BYD Europe B.V., have announced the introduction of the first full-size pure electric city buses to enter service in Copenhagen, which has set itself an ambitious goal in terms of sustainable mobility: to become the world’s first zero-emission capital by 2025.
BYD’s pure electric bus for Copenhagen
The two electric buses provided by BYD will operate on trial service on different passenger-carrying routes with different loads in Copenhagen for two years. The project is being carried out in cooperation with the Municipality of Copenhagen, DONG Energy, City-Trafik and Arriva. "We are very proud to soon be able to present the first pure electric buses to the city”, said Dorthe Nøhr Pedersen, CEO of Movia. “Movia's buses used in the neighbourhood consume around 50 million litres of diesel fuel per year. The introduction of the BYD electric buses allows for significant improvements to the environment and the overall noise level. If BYD’s buses can meet our requirements for reliability and can simultaneously improve the environment, we will consider introducing more and more".
The Transport Minister of Denmark, Henrik Dam Kristensen, is looking forward to the arrival of the electric buses. Electric buses emit no CO2, NOx and particulate matter from the tailpipe. And they can significantly reduce noise levels. Including emissions from power plants, electric buses will reduce emissions of CO2, NOx and particulate matter compared to the existing diesel buses by respectively, 60, 95 and 80 percent. Furthermore, electric buses are cheaper and easier to maintain. "It's an exciting project. We need new energy efficient transportation technologies to be a part of everyday life - electric buses are a good example of this”, said Transport Minister Henrik Dam Kristensen.
Yongping Chen, the business director of BYD added “Our electric bus has proven that it not only significantly reduces pollution and noise in large cities, but it has also greatly reduced operating expenses versus natural-gas and diesel buses. Copenhagen is a landmark market for Denmark and even the whole of Northern Europe. We hope this pilot operation project will benefit the acceptance of our electric buses’ in other European countries”.
The BYD electric bus is 12 metres long (40 feet). It is able to run 250 km (155 miles) on a single charge in urban conditions. The Fe battery (Iron Phosphate battery) fitted in the BYD electric bus boasts the highest safety, longest service life and most environmentally-friendly rechargeable chemistry and contains no heavy metals or toxic electrolytes. BYD electric buses are now in regular passenger service in several cities in China, Europe and North America, making BYD the largest electric bus manufacturer in the world. The accumulated mileage achieved for BYD electric buses by the end of May 2012 has reached over 7 million kilometers (or 4.35 million miles).