Bus companies’ pollution-reduction plans riding on use of clean energy vehicles
Operators are introducing electric and hybrid models to cut emissions, as reports from Bengbu, Anhui and Qingdao, Shandong.
Many of China’s larger cities are home to millions of residents and see thousands of buses in operation every day, resulting in pollution from exhaust emissions.
In response, a large number of cities are planning to improve air quality by replacing traditional diesel- or gasoline-powered fleets with clean energy electric and hybrid petroleum-electric or gas-electric vehicles, according to national traffic and transportation authorities.
Two of those cities are Bengbu, Anhui province, and Qingdao, Shandong province, which are making efforts to introduce modern, nonpolluting vehicles on inner-city routes.
“Electric buses are regarded as the most effective vehicles in cutting exhaust emissions to improve air quality,” said Lyu Jiayu, head of the Bengbu bureau of traffic and transportation.
“They are also quieter and more comfortable, which improves passengers’ travel experiences.”
As the city’s only player in the inner-city bus service sector, the Bengbu Bus Group operates about 1,700 buses on 60 routes and employs 3,570 people, including 1,653 drivers.
Since 2012, the city has provided more than 1,000 new buses — including 721 electric vehicles and 62 hybrids — for the State-owned operator.
Lyu said Bengbu, a thirdtier city with a population of more than 3 million, stopped purchasing traditional buses in 2015, but still has more than 900 conventional vehicles in service. They will be replaced by 700 electric buses by 2020.
Finances
While the promotion of electric buses is not hard for middle-tier cities such as Bengbu, the biggest challenge lies in formulating financing plans for the replacements, according to officials.
The city began using electric buses in 2015, when Bengbu Bus put 50 rented vehicles into service, along with three hybrids.
“If we had bought the buses, they would have cost 1.8 million yuan ($272,000) each. We would have had to pay the total within three years, which could have placed great financial pressure on the company,” said Sa Ning, president of Bengbu Bus.
Instead, the company pays 160,000 yuan annually to rent each bus on an eight-year lease, according to Sa. Most of the vehicles operated by Bengbu Bus are made by BYD Co, which specializes in vehicles and rechargeable batteries.
“We pay BYD 1.28 million yuan per bus over the eightyear lease, while it also receives considerable subsidies from the central and provincial governments,” Sa said, adding that the subsidies are not based on production figures, but on the number of buses in operation.
He didn’t disclose the scale of the subsidies BYD receives, but “the combined total for rental and subsidies is definitely more than 1.8 million”.
Last year, Bengbu Bus made its first purchases, when it bought 30 electric buses from BYD, while this year it made its biggest investment in electric vehicles by purchasing 500 electric buses and 62 hybrids from BYD. It is also leasing 138 electric buses from the same manufacturer.
Lyu, the official, said the investment was partly a result of the local government’s strongest-ever emphasis on improving air quality and its efforts to win the National Civilized City title, which is awarded by the Central Commission for Guiding Cultural and Ethical Progress.
The commission, established in 1997, is one of the Communist Party of China’s most important ideological steering bodies.
The level of public service and residents’ comments about urban management are highly influential when the commission is evaluating contenders for the title, which was awarded to Bengbu last month. Lyu believes the introduction of clean energy vehicles by Bengbu Bus contributed to the city gaining the award.
While Bengbu has only recently begun using clean energy vehicles, Qingdao, a well-known tourist spot in Shandong province, has six years’ experience of the practice. The coastal city, which has a population of 9.2 million and was visited by about 80 million tourists last year, operates nearly 10,000 buses.
Although the city stopped buying traditional buses in 2011, many will remain in use until they are no longer serviceable. “The traditional buses will not be replaced until they are old enough to be abandoned,” said Yuan Haibo, head of the Qingdao traffic and transportation bureau.
This year, Qingdao has spent 1.1 billion yuan on 914 electric buses, the bureau said.
Recharging facilities
According to Sa, 355 charging poles for electric buses have been erected at 28 stations across Bengbu. Each pole can charge two buses simultaneously, so there are enough to meet the needs of Bengbu Bus. Recharging operations are usually conducted after 10 pm, when the price of electricity is at its lowest.
There are not as many charging poles in Qingdao, though, because the scale of operations in the larger city would make the practice too expensive.
“Building enough charging poles here would be far more difficult,” Yuan said.
In the past six years, Qingdao has used a range of methods to meet the demand for recharging services. In 2011, State Grid Co built the Xuejiadao bus terminal, the country’s first supply station for charging electric bus batteries, in the city.
“The terminal, in Qingdao’s West Coast New Area, received investment of 200 million yuan, and was designed to meet the needs of 200 electric buses,” said Wang Xianjun, deputy general manager of the Zhenqing Bus Co, which operates in the area.
“The terminal’s biggest advantage is that it is a superfast recharging facility.”
Since 2011, six similar stations have been built in the city, but they gradually became smaller in scale as a result of the high construction and operating costs.
“For every two buses, each station must keep an extra set of batteries in reserve, which means we have to spend more money and build more storage facilities,” Wang said, adding that each set of batteries can weigh 2 metric tons, which makes them hard to replace.
In 2014, State Grid adjusted its program and laid greater emphasis on the development of fast-charging poles — which allow buses to obtain a supplementary power boost — while providing enough slow-charging poles to meet demand.
“Ten minutes of fast-charging allows a bus with a low battery