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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Electric Bus Maker Buzzing Over Orders From States

In a hangarlike building on the north end of Lancaster, 13 electric buses move through the assembly line at BYD Coach & Bus. Some are almost empty shells, while others near completion with wiring and windows installed. Sections of a 60-foot bus are in booths for painting. Finished vehicles get a final check before customers take delivery. All this activity at the plant must accelerate after BYD announced last month an agreement with Washington state and Oregon for up to 800 new buses. That’s in addition to 100 buses already on back order. “We have to be building at a denser mode,” said Macy Neshati, BYD’s vice president of sales. The new orders mean the factory’s payroll of 120 will have to expand. And the company will have to reconfigure its manufacturing operation to double output. Neshati said a week after receiving a contract from the Washington State Department of Transportation in August, BYD received its first order for five of its 30-foot buses. “We have several other agencies that are also interested in the 30-foot bus as well as the over-the-road (long distance travel) coach, the 45-footer,” he added. Currently, 15 buses can be worked on at the same time. By next year, the plan is to produce one bus a day, “which will imply there are 30 buses in production at any one time,” he said. State contracts With deals such as the one with Washington state, meeting that one-bus-a-day goal might not be farfetched. Washington state had eyed expanding the use of electric buses and didn’t want smaller transit agencies and colleges to be affected during a bidding process due to a lack of resources. The state transportation agency conducted all the due diligence of researching bus companies and their buses. BYD drove a bus up north for officials to ride and look over, Neshati said. Now the smaller transit agencies, including some in Oregon as that state has a reciprocal agreement with Washington state, don’t have to worry about going through the bidding process alone. “They can just pick up the phone and place an order and get a bus shipped to them,” Neshati said. BYD buses have an average battery range of about 155 miles, but the Antelope Valley Transit Authority, which has two of the buses, has found that range can be extended. Executive Director Len Engel said there are some drivers who are able to work the acceleration and braking in such a way to prevent the batteries from draining quickly. “Our better operators can hit over 200 miles once they are done with the route,” Engel said. For Washington state, BYD was chosen as the provider in 10 categories of buses, ranging from 30-foot to 60-foot transit models to two over-the-road models. Five models come with on-route charging capabilities, which involve the use of magnetic charging of batteries during the brief downtime before a bus returns to its route. If a bus is down for, say, 10 minutes, the on-route charging is capable of adding an additional seven or eight miles of range. At 10 times a day, that is an extra 70 or 80 miles of range, Neshati said. “It’s a great way to do a range extension for transit systems that have longer routes,” he said. Model selection BYD Coach & Bus is part of BYD Motors, the U.S. division of BYD Co. in Shenzhen, China. The company’s Lancaster plant opened in 2013 and delivered its first buses a year later to the Antelope Valley authority. BYD also has a facility in the city for assembling the battery packs used in the buses. BYD is an early entrant into the pure electric-bus market in the United States. There are not many companies that make such vehicles and few, if any, can match the number of models offered by BYD. The Lancaster plant can produce five models for public transit ranging in length from 22 feet to 50 feet. Two other over-the-road models of 40 feet and 45 feet can be used for interstate travel and come equipped with luggage racks and reclining seats. The American Public Transportation Association estimates that less than 1 percent of buses used by transit agencies are powered by zero-emission batteries. Jeff Hiott, senior program manager with the Washington, D.C., advocacy group, said that as battery technology improves to extend mileage range, more interest will develop in electric buses. But in order for widespread adoption of such vehicles to take root, the infrastructure to charge a large fleet overnight must be built, said Hiott. “Figuring out that hurdle is being dealt with,” he added. In California, BYD has made or is in the process of assembling buses for the AVTA; Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or Metro; the city of Gardena; Stanford University and Solano County Transit. The company sources many of its parts and components from U.S. companies with the exception of the chassis and sidewalls used in the frame, which are shipped from China. But even that is changing, Neshati said. This month, the company expects to complete its first frame made from scratch in the United States. In addition to the Washington state contract, BYD is angling for business closer to home. For example, Metro has an option to purchase 20 more of the electric buses in addition to the five it received early in the summer. A three-month testing period on those five put 6,700 miles on the buses. After having the buses modified and upgraded, further testing was expected to resume this month. The Antelope Valley agency is also interested in ordering more electric buses and its board would like the authority to be a 100 percent electric-bus fleet as soon as possible, said the AVTA’s Engel. “The hometown player has some advantages to provide service quickly but it would have to be competitively bid,” he said. Other companies that are making electric buses include Complete Coach Works in Riverside; Burlingame’s Proterra, with its 40-foot-long Catalyst electric bus; and New Flyer Industries Inc. in Manitoba. There’s also Downey’s Ebus Inc., which makes a 22-foot-long electric bus and has in development a 40-footer made from lightweight composite material. Its website claims the $395,000 price for the 22-foot model is half the cost of one from BYD or Proterra. BYD’s experience in the Asian market doesn’t necessarily put it ahead of other American bus makers, noted the transportation association’s Hiott. “The North American market is different and has its own regulations and rules,” he said. “They are on the same playing field with other manufacturers in the U.S.” ‘Marry-up machine’ Making a BYD bus starts with what Neshati calls the “marry-up machine,” a device that puts the chassis together with the two side panels to give some semblance of what looks like a vehicle. Then comes the interior work of adding doors, the steering wheel, wiring and applying an undercoating in a spray booth. Later, the battery modules that power the bus are installed. The battery cells are shipped from China and configured into eight-, 10- or 12-cell modules depending on where they are placed in the bus, whether over the wheel wells, in a rear compartment or in the roof. Engineers configure the modules to get the proper voltage, amps and kilowatt hours of operation, Neshati said. “It is a complicated calculation of how many cells to get the pack at the voltage needed,” he added. The battery plant in Lancaster employs between three and 20 workers, depending on need. Neshati expects the number of workers to increase during the last quarter of the year. Layoffs are not necessary because when those workers are not needed for battery assembly they come over to make buses. “We have picked up so many orders now that I hope to get it more evenly staffed,” Neshati said of the battery operation. Back on the assembly line, the buses’ interiors and exteriors get trimmed out with side and rooftop insulation, flooring, back bulkheads, windows, destination signs and even a bike rack on the front. When fully assembled, the bus goes through a complete debugging to make sure all electrical components work correctly. Afterwards, the buses are put through a rain simulator to make sure each meets standards set by the American Public Transportation Association in terms of waterproofing. With more than 30 years of experience in transit and heavy-industrial manufacturing, Neshti believes that efficiency can always be improved. The assembly process at BYD is no exception. After producing two buses for the AVTA, assembly steps were resequenced so that wiring was put in before sidewalls were insulated and the skin was attached. As more orders come in and the number of buses worked on simultaneously goes up, a second assembly line will be added that will result in a change of how the buses come through the plant, he said.

Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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