After the first 'kick' in alternative propulsion made by automobiles, regular buses are gaining their influence, especially within cities with few million inhabitants. Quite a few cities around Europe and USA are already updating their fleets of regular diesel-driven buses to electric ones. After all, having a lot of space to put batteries inside, archiving sufficient autonomy for a bus is not a big of a problem anymore, which means they are becoming totally usable in everyday traffic.

However, when it comes to most developed countries or at least cities, there is a new 'player' in this game from far east, China's metropolis Shenzhen with more than 12 million inhabitants. Planning to do it next year but surpassing it for a while they have completed the purchase of no less than 16.000 electric driven buses. Those will be added to existing fleet of 539 electric busses, already being in use.

Electrification of taxis planned in next few years

Total amount of money spend on the purchase is not known but it is expected to be several hundred million euros. Next to that city has also updated the infrastructure. In total there were 510 new charging stations being built, where there could be 8.000 buses charging every moment. Advantages of this will be substantial. It is expected, that just by replacing diesel driven buses with electric ones, city will save a total of 345.000 liters of diesel per year, whereas amount of toxic exhausts should drop by 1,35 million tons.

Next step in making city air and public transport in Shenzhen cleaner is to fully replace petrol driven taxis with electric ones. Currently there are 12.518 taxis driving around the city and 62,5% of them are already driving by electricity. This share is planned to be driven to 100 per cent in only next few years. With determinations they put in electrification of bus fleet, there is now doubt it will happen very soon.

Jure Šujica
Photo: Jure Šujica