Skip to main content

Chinese-Polish consortium to build electric buses

A Chinese electric vehicle consortium led by the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) has signed agreements to help develop an electric bus network in Poland. Other members of the consortium are BIT subsidiary BIT Huachuang Electric Vehicle Technology, CITIC Guoan Mengguli Power Science and Technology and Shanghai Dianba New Energy Technology. According to the agreements signed with Warsaw University of Technology and Polish power company Tauron Polska Energia, the Chinese group and Tauron will establish
February 7, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
A Chinese electric vehicle consortium led by the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) has signed agreements to help develop an electric bus network in Poland.  Other members of the consortium are BIT subsidiary BIT Huachuang Electric Vehicle Technology, CITIC Guoan Mengguli Power Science and Technology and Shanghai Dianba New Energy Technology.

According to the agreements signed with Warsaw University of Technology and Polish power company Tauron Polska Energia, the Chinese group and Tauron will establish an electric vehicle public transportation system in Poland in the first phase.

Six electric buses with a platform developed by Beijing Institute of Technology, including a power battery swapping system, a battery charging and discharging station, and an emergency service system, will be made for the two-year trial project in Poland.

Six charging and swapping stations will later be set up in five Polish cities, with 780 purely electric buses in operation.

BIT Huachuang and Tauron will also seek to promote their jointly developed technology in other European countries.

As one of the earliest research units to develop a commercial purely electric vehicle power system platform, BIT has cooperated with more than ten Chinese automobile companies, including Foton, 4322 Yutong, Zhongtong Bus and GAC Group, to produce more than 2,000 purely electric commercial vehicles.

It has also cooperated with Beijing Public Transport Holdings, CITIC Guoan Mengguli and Beijing Dianba on the operation of electric buses at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Shanghai Expo, Guangzhou Asian Games, and the Chinese government's 10-city 1,000-electric vehicle program.

According to a recent report from US-based market research and consulting firm 5644 Pike Research, the global market for electric buses is expected to grow steadily over the next six years, with a compound annual growth rate of 26 percent from 2012 to 2018.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • ‘Free’ power for signs, shelters and so much more
    March 17, 2016
    David Crawford looks at the sunny side of the street. Solar power has been relatively slow in entering the transport sector, but a current blossoming of activity bodes well for the large-scale harnessing of an alternative energy that is zero-emission at source and, in practical terms, infinitely renewable. Traffic management and traveller information systems, and actual vehicles, are all emerging as areas for deployment. Meanwhile roads themselves are being viewed as new-style, fossil fuel-free ‘power stati
  • Global moves drive EV infrastructure
    October 7, 2020
    Charge+ in Singapore, Total in the UK and Electrify America all have new plans
  • Volvo tests electric road
    July 1, 2013
    Researchers at the Volvo Group are looking into a future where trucks and buses are continuously supplied with electric power without carrying large batteries. Instead, power lines are built into the surface of the road. This could be a future solution for long-distance trucks and buses running on electricity. “In city traffic, there are currently various solutions and we are researching many others. We have field tests in progress where our plug-in buses are equipped with a battery that can be charged quic
  • US DOT announces 2016 funding for clean buses
    July 27, 2016
    The US Department of Transportation’s Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has announced the 20 transit providers in 13 states which will receive a share of US$55 million under its Low or No-Emission (Low-No) Bus Competitive Grant Program. The program provides funding for buses and related technology that replaces aging diesel fuel buses with battery-electric or fuel cell-powered vehicles and incorporates other innovations. Among the projects selected to receive 2016 Low-No funding are the Santa Clara Va