Electric battery-powered bus begins trial

TransLink’s first electric batterypowered bus is set to charge into service Monday for a trial run.

Were it not that the bus was nearly silent and scent-free, it would be indistinguishable to a casual observer from the diesel buses in the transit authority’s fleet.

The bus, built in Los Angeles by BYD, will run regular transit routes for the next three months, Kevin Desmond, the chief executive officer at TransLink, told reporters at a media event Friday.

That trial will let maintenance staff “kick the tires, get used to the bus, understand how it can work,” Desmond said.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, who has plugged batterypowered buses for months, stood beside Desmond before joining him on the bus for a test drive around south Vancouver.

“The future is here,” Robertson said, adding that mayors in the region were “very excited about the possibility of transforming TransLink’s bus fleet into being zero emissions.”

BYD’s bus has a better than 250-kilometre range, according to the company. When it tested the bus in Edmonton in winter, they loaded it with passengers, blasted the heat and still got more than 260 km on a single charge.

Recharging the vehicle can be done in about three hours while it is off duty, and its battery will last a million kilometres before it needs to be replaced, according to the company. There are 15,000 of the buses in service around the world.

At $1 million apiece, the batterypowered buses are relatively pricey. For comparison, diesel buses run $600,000 apiece, compressed natural gas buses are $650,000 each, and diesel-electric hybrids are $900,000. But battery-powered buses are cheaper than trolley buses, which go for $1.2 million each.

As far as operating costs, BYD’s buses are 80 per cent cheaper to run than diesel buses, according to the company. They also don’t require the substantial infrastructure that TransLink’s 70-year-old electric trolley bus system does.

Desmond said transit is already a green option because it takes thousands of personal vehicles from roadways, but he said the transit authority wants to reduce its own carbon footprint.

According to a report to Metro’s finance and intergovernmental committee, TransLink intends to buy 105 new diesel-electric hybrid buses — 94 conventional and 11 articulated — 12 gas-powered community shuttles, 13 gas-powered HandyDart vehicles and four electric battery buses. Those vehicles would enter service next year.

The three-month trial of BYD’s bus comes at no cost to TransLink and it is one of several trials that the authority will do over the next couple of years, Desmond said.