Electric Bus Revolution of Shenzhen City in China - Report by India Smart Grid Forum (ISGF)

Shenzhen is the only city in the world where all the public buses are electric. During the period from 2011 to 2017, they replaced all the diesel buses with electric buses. There are 16359 electric buses in operation in Shenzhen City. Significance of this number is to be viewed from the perspective that in 2017, there were only 956 electric buses in entire Europe and less than 500 in entire United States.

Electric Bus Revolution of Shenzhen

Public transportation in Shenzhen is very well planned and efficient. Buses used to be operated by Shenzhen City Government owned Shenzhen Bus Group and several private operators. In 2007, the City Government decided to move from diesel buses to electric buses and electric taxis. First move was to consolidate the bus operators in to three companies:

1. Shenzhen Eastern Bus Company Ltd:  16 private bus operators were integrated and made Shenzhen Eastern Bus Company Ltd which is fully owned by the Shenzhen City Government. Today they operate 5805 electric buses.
2. Shenzhen Bus Group: This Company was owned by Shenzhen City Government. Today they operate 5600 electric buses.
3. Shenzhen Western Bus Company Ltd: This is still privately owned and they operate about 4000+ electric buses.

ISGF visited Shenzhen Eastern Bus Company Ltd on 16th April 2018 along with senior officers from BYD. All the electric buses operating in Shenzhen Eastern Bus Company are BYD’s buses. Majority of the buses in other two bus companies are also from BYD which is head quartered in Shenzhen. BYD has one of their lithium ion battery plant (18 GWh annual capacity) in Shenzhen.

The President, General Manager and CTO of Shenzhen Eastern Bus Company hosted ISGF at one of their bus depots which support about 700 electric buses. 

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