China’s rapid switch to electric vehicles is capturing global attention, but what may be less well known is how much of the change has been driven by public transport — and especially buses.
Four in five of the 700,000 buses and trams on the roads in Chinese cities today are new energy models — which include electric and hybrid vehicles — according to the Ministry of Transport.
Central and local government support has helped Chinese bus companies old and new. Zhengzhou-based Yutong Bus, traces its roots back to Maoist China, but its electric bus business has grown rapidly since 2010, boosted by the Chinese government’s support for eco-friendly public transport vehicles. That same year, Shenzhen-based electric vehicle behemoth BYD produced its first e-bus.
“They [the Chinese government] were much more eager to provide subsidies to urban government consumers than to private consumers,” says Deborah Seligsohn, assistant professor of political science at the University of Villanova. “That included both buses, taxi fleets [and] government vehicle fleets.”
While the charts above show how far ahead China has been on bus electrification, it also shows how the pace has slowed.
That’s also reflected in the slowdown in Yutong’s domestic sales in recent years, which the company attributed in its latest annual report to the stuttering Chinese economy and the phasing out of government EV subsidies.
Yutong’s story has in turn become one reflected across China Inc: it has looked abroad for growth. Indeed, the company’s overseas sales have rebounded quickly since the end of China’s pandemic restrictions, while Yutong buses have appeared at high-profile international events. More than 1,500 Yutong buses were used to transport fans at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, for example.
As in other areas, though, this kind of expansion is creating conflict.
Today, Chinese companies including Yutong and BYD, account for more than a quarter of the electric bus market in Europe, which was slower to adopt zero-emissions standards for public transport than China.
But European business leaders concerned about low-price Chinese imports have grumbled about European transport companies placing orders with Chinese bus manufacturers — as, for example, when Belgian company De Lijn ordered 92 buses worth more than €43 million ($47 million) from BYD in January this year.
I went for a ride on [Yutong’s 10-seater autonomous bus] in the city of Zhengzhou in the open streets. It really gave me a glimpse into the future. I wouldn’t be surprised if, within a couple of years, they were in every major city.
Paul Allen Benavides, business lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology
The European Commission launched an anti-subsidy investigation last October targeting Chinese electric vehicles, which could result in higher tariffs being imposed on such imports. In 2019, the Commission passed the Clean Vehicles Directive, which set targets for public procurement of electric vehicles including buses.
Whatever the Commission decides, European companies are already fighting back. Leading domestic manufacturers like Germany’s MAN Truck & Bus and Poland’s Solaris Bus & Coach have stepped up their e-bus production, helping to narrow the market share of Chinese companies in 2023. Solaris delivered 183 electric vehicles valued at €100 million ($109 million) to Norwegian transport company Unibuss in April last year, its largest e-bus order to date.
Check out the graphic below to see how European bus companies rebounded in 2023:
European companies will still face a challenge keeping up with the likes of Yutong, however.
The company has long benefited from its partnership since 2012 with Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), which provides batteries for nearly all of Yutong’s new energy buses. In March, the two companies unveiled an EV battery with a warranty covering 932,000 miles over a 15-year lifespan, which the companies claim is nearly double that of conventional EV batteries.
Yutong’s most recent innovation came in 2021, when it unveiled a 10-seater autonomous bus named the Xiaoyu 2.0.
“I went for a ride on that bus in the city of Zhengzhou in the open streets,” says Paul Allen Benavides, business lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology. “It really gave me a glimpse into the future. I wouldn’t be surprised if, within a couple of years, they were in every major city.”
Aaron Mc Nicholas is a staff writer at The Wire based in Washington DC. He was previously based in Hong Kong, where he worked at Bloomberg and at Storyful, a news agency dedicated to verifying newsworthy social media content. He earned a Master of Arts in Asian Studies at Georgetown University and a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Dublin City University in Ireland.
