Last week, TriMet invited reporters and bloggers to pile onto a silver electric bus with the initials "BYD" emblazoned across the side.
As the bus rolled through Beaverton, Oregon's largest Transit Agency said it's considering buying a small fleet of the whispery e-buses, saying they represent a fuel-and-earth-saving future.
Over the next two weeks, TriMet riders on several lines will get their chance to ride the plug-in BYD bus for free (the trial bus isn't outfitted with a fare box or ticket printer).
If you're curious, the agency has created a website that lists the routes on which the all-electric vehicle will be making unscheduled stops, adding to service along the way.
It looks like Beaverton, Hillsboro and Washington County is receiving most of the electric love.
Here's what we know about this week so far:
Tuesday 6/24: Lines 46, 48
Wednesday 6/25: 47, 67
Thursday 6/26: Lines 46, 48
BYD stands for Build Your Dreams. But despite a healthy cash infusion from Warren Buffett, the Chinese company has reportedly had some serious public relations and equipment nightmares since opening its American headquarters in California three years ago.
Matt Sheehan of The Huffington Post reports:
BYD and its U.S. backers have seen the good, the bad and the ugly of Chinese investment in America. After winning contracts to build the first all-electric bus fleets in Long Beach and Los Angeles, the company stood accused of everything from manufacturing unsafe buses to giving away jobs reserved for Californians to Chinese laborers and paying them a mere $1.50 per hour. The company has fought back against the explosive allegations and won, forcing California to drop the wage charges.
As Sheehan reports, many of the problems have been unfairly hoisted upon the bus maker as it tries to gain traction in what is turning out to be a cut-throat market for electric vehicles in the United States.
In fact, three months ago, Long Beach Transit terminated a 10-bus, $12.1 million order for BYD electric buses, after the Federal Transit Administration determined the company was ineligible due to a technicality to receive federal grant money when the deal was struck last year.
But Streetsblog Los Angeles has been less forgiving in its chronicling of what it says are serious equipment flaws with the BYD buses.
Last October, the popular alternative transportation blog reported:
First, we had the beyond-sketchy RFP process earlier this year where LBT went with BYD over Altoona-tested-and-ready-to-go South Carolina electric bus manufacturer Proterra. This was despite multiple questions regarding BYD's capability to fulfill the buy America clause set forth by the TIGGER grant given to LBT to procure the vehicles. This was also despite a failure to have any form of Altoona testing done and their ultimately failure in establishing promised North American headquarters in Los Angeles and Windsor, Canada. And this was also despite the fact that they lied about who they had already built accounts with as well fibbing the results of a trial run of one their buses.
Secondly, after BYD scored the bid and finally began the process of Altoona testing, it turns out they were not fairing so well: cracks in the rear of the bus caused the bus to be returned with the problem ultimately being rooted back to "low-quality welding" in China.
Well, we now have more welding issues, all of which come from China. It was reported that LBT inspectors have found that the frames—the very ones that Executive Director and Vice President of Maintenance and Facilities at LBT Rolando Cruz said were the "tinker toy" parts being sent to the United States for assembly—are flawed.
According to the Long Beach Business Journal, the frames had "unacceptable" issues, including "improper bracket installation on the bus sidewalls and roof assemblies and inconsistencies with steel subassemblies on the chassis."
Streetsblog also reported that "eyebrows were raised over the proposed buses' weight significantly damaging roadways," said a post about the bus on Streetsblog LA last September.
Given that Portland and Washington County are looking for taxpayers to chip in even more to maintain crumbling streets, it would seem that the BYD bus might be a hard sell.
For its part, TriMet would prefer not to discuss the BYD soap opera.
Here's the email from TriMet spokeswoman Angela Murphy:
We are aware of the media attention surrounding BYD, however it is not our focus. As an agency we are committed to exploring opportunities to introduce lower-emission, more fuel-efficient buses into our fleet. This two-week BYD testing period is allowing us a unique opportunity to test a new emissions-free vehicle to evaluate how it performs.
Meanwhile, James Holtz, BYD's fleet sales manager, said much of the reporting on the company has been inaccurate.
"I always focus selling on the merits of our company, its superior technology, and BYD's green technology job creation in America and around the world," Holtz said in an email. "By the way, our bus became the first ever battery electric 40' bus to complete the FTA's Altoona Testing last month."
Holtz clarified how the Chinese company, which started as a battery maker, keeps things green with its battery:
We utilize bi-directional inverting technology: We power our bus from 480V/3Phase/100 Amp AC power from the grid and do on-board inversion to DC to charge the LiFe PO4 (Lithium Ion Iron Phosphate) batteries. This allows us to charge our buses with minimal charging infrastructure/costs. This bi-directional inversion capability also allows us to discharge AC power from the bus via vehicle to vehicle (V2V), vehicle to load (V2L) and vehicle to grid (V2G). Each bus is essentially a rolling generator able to provide up to 324 KWh of energy for emergency use (power homes, a Red Cross Tent, a small hospital).
Our batteries can either be responsibly recycled after their useful life on the bus, or they can be repurposed for another application. We have demonstrated capacities of over 70% after 10,000 lifecycle charges charging once a day from 0 SOC (State of Charge) to 100 SOC. This is 27.4 years of holding more than 70% capacity when charged from 0 to 100 SOC once a day. The average life of a city bus is 12-15 years. We use the same battery cells and modules in BYD's fixed energy storage solutions, PV, and off grid LED solar powered street lights. The batteries instead of being recycled can be repurposed for a second meaningful green life.
-- Joseph Rose