Last year, the NSW Government announced they wanted to transition the buses used in Australia’s largest city, to a fleet of electric buses. After dipping their toes in the water with a little trial, it seems the days are numbered for the fleet of 8,000 buses in Sydney.
Australian EV company Nexport has announced a deal worth $700 million to establish a production facility to create electric busses for Transport NSW.
Back in August 2016, Nexport delivered and operated Australia’s first electric airport bus fleet (6 vehicles) at Sydney Airport in August 2016. From there, they went on to run an 11 vehicle electric bus fleet at Brisbane Airport.
Most recently, Nexport was involved with the trial of 4 electric buses in Sydney’s inner west, supporting the supply of the chassis for the trial.
Nexport is the official Australian chassis supplier for BYD and BYD manufactured the first electric buses to meet Australian Design Rules in 2016.
The company has also entered into an agreement to use the technology stack from Chinese-based BYD, who actually makes the world’s largest selection of battery-electric buses, ranging from a 23-foot coach, with a 40kWh battery, to a 30-foot shuttle with an 80kWh battery, right up to a 60-foot Transit with 446 kWh with a range of 220 miles, or 354km. The charge time for that model is fairly prompt at between 2 and 2.5hrs.
BYD even offers a 45-foot double-decker bus, which while heavier, does feature the same capacity Iron Phosphate battery.
Perhaps even more interesting than the bus deal is that Nexport has big ambitions. The company plans to really grow manufacturing here in Australia at its new location in Moss Vale, NSW. Nexport has committed to producing electric cars, trucks, and vans.
It is expected that the production facility could create as many as 2,000 new jobs. The Driven is reporting that Nexport has orders for 115 buses, however these will be built offshore, but once the local production facility is up and running, would transition to locally built products in the next round of bus orders.
In 2019, Nexport’s made a submission to Transport NSW on Electric Buses in Regional and Metropolitan Public Transport Networks in NSW.
More information at The Driven.
