Experience, Reliability Give Chinese Long Beach Electric Bus Contract
Harry Saltzgaver
Long Beach Transit’s board voted Monday to award an $11.5 million contract for 10 all-electric buses to a firm whose parent company is Chinese-owned, noting that the bid complies with Made In America specifications and touting its large experience edge over the second bidder.
BYD Motors, the winning bidder, is a U.S. subsidiary of BYD Company Ltd., a publicly-held company in China. The other finalist, Proterra, is a private equity company out of Greenville, S.C.
LBT staff first made the recommendation to go with the BYD bid in February, but the LBT board asked to table the decision for a month to gather more information. After two study sessions, that decision was made at Monday’s meeting on a 5-2 vote, with Lori Ann Farrell and Maricela de Rivera voting no.
BYD has been in business since 1995 and sells batteries, solar panels and electric cars in addition to buses. Company officials said they plan to build a new chassis facility in California sometime next year, although the chassis for the first 10 Long Beach buses will come from China. The batteries are built in a plant in LA.
Proterra was formed in 2004 and has about 160 employees. They have sold 32 of their EcoRide BE35 electric buses and have delivered 14 (compared to 1,000 and 365 for BYD).
Both firms’ coaches carry 35 seated passengers and more than 20 standing. A primary difference is Proterra’s use of lithium-titanate batteries offering a 30-mile range where BTD uses iron-phosphate batteries with a 7.5 year warranty and a range of 118 to 163 miles.
LBT plans to use the buses on the Passport routes downtown, including trips to and from the Queen Mary. The board approved an additional $1.8 million in potential spending if a WAVE (Wireless Advanced Vehicle Electrification) charging system can be developed from current prototypes as a charging station at the Queen Mary stop. The $11.5 million bid includes 10 manual pug-in depot chargers, which take four hours for a full charge.
According to the staff report, the BYD system will cost significantly less than the Proterra system, saving more than $4 million, despite the lower initial cost for Proterra buses. The proven battery system and warranty were other major factors in BYD’s favor.
Money for the purchase came primarily from a Federal Transit Administration grant from the Transit Investments for Greenhouse Gas and Energy Reduction (TIGGER) program, some Prop 1B money and a $700,000 grant from the Port of Long Beach’s Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Mitigation Grant Program.
LBT staff first made the recommendation to go with the BYD bid in February, but the LBT board asked to table the decision for a month to gather more information. After two study sessions, that decision was made at Monday’s meeting on a 5-2 vote, with Lori Ann Farrell and Maricela de Rivera voting no.
BYD has been in business since 1995 and sells batteries, solar panels and electric cars in addition to buses. Company officials said they plan to build a new chassis facility in California sometime next year, although the chassis for the first 10 Long Beach buses will come from China. The batteries are built in a plant in LA.
Proterra was formed in 2004 and has about 160 employees. They have sold 32 of their EcoRide BE35 electric buses and have delivered 14 (compared to 1,000 and 365 for BYD).
Both firms’ coaches carry 35 seated passengers and more than 20 standing. A primary difference is Proterra’s use of lithium-titanate batteries offering a 30-mile range where BTD uses iron-phosphate batteries with a 7.5 year warranty and a range of 118 to 163 miles.
LBT plans to use the buses on the Passport routes downtown, including trips to and from the Queen Mary. The board approved an additional $1.8 million in potential spending if a WAVE (Wireless Advanced Vehicle Electrification) charging system can be developed from current prototypes as a charging station at the Queen Mary stop. The $11.5 million bid includes 10 manual pug-in depot chargers, which take four hours for a full charge.
According to the staff report, the BYD system will cost significantly less than the Proterra system, saving more than $4 million, despite the lower initial cost for Proterra buses. The proven battery system and warranty were other major factors in BYD’s favor.
Money for the purchase came primarily from a Federal Transit Administration grant from the Transit Investments for Greenhouse Gas and Energy Reduction (TIGGER) program, some Prop 1B money and a $700,000 grant from the Port of Long Beach’s Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Mitigation Grant Program.
SOURCE: Gazzete
It’s currently believed that the factory will be located in Lancaster, CA. BYD people including Wang Chuanfu [the founder of BYD] have made numerous visits to the desert community in recent weeks. BYD has a number of solar projects in the Antelope Valley and even are involved in new home solar systems with KB homes.
As long as the US government doesn’t object to a Chinese company locating a manufacturing facility next to our premiere flight test and research facilities of EAFB and Palmdale then the factory would be a very good thing for the local community which has a higher than average unemployment rate and is expected to be severely impacted by the Sequestration due to the large number of DoD employees. EAFB is the single largest employer in the community and every major government contractor is represented with manufacturing and engineering employment in the thousands.