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Xiong Liangping, deputy GM of Ankai Bus told our journalist, “In this year Ankai is about to achieve sales volume of 700 units with 200 units to be completed. The new pilot cities without vehicle enterprises would be key markets for Ankai in the future.”
Furthermore, Ankai has got a new order of 300 new-energy buses from Hefei, including 200 pure electric buses, 50 plug-in electric buses and 50 extended range buses. In Tianjin, Ankai vehicles are also put into operation as promotion. He released that Ankai had not made detailed promotional plan and cities without vehicle manufacturers were definitely key breakthrough.
Plug-in Bus Embraces Explosive Increase
As for the present development trend of new-energy bus, Xiong Liangping held the idea that plug-in hybrid bus would be more acceptable for customers. He said, “Based on current operation, pure electric bus would be hard to increase greatly even pilots cities increase. Cities without any pure electric buses maybe attempt that which also needs great support of government. Land price in every city is too expensive which makes charging station covering lots of lands more unpractical. Plug-in electric bus can make up the pure electric bus’ disadvantages of short range and charging problem. If plug-in electric bus can be purchased at the price of traditional bus, plug-in bus market would undoubtedly embrace explosive increase.”
Future prospect of common hybrid bus remains unclear due to unclear policy. Xiong Liangping said that hybrid bus would be far behind conventional bus in purchasing cost without any subsidy. Additionally, it effect of energy conservation and emission reduction is worse than new-energy bus. Hence, Ankai sets pure electric bus as its major strategic plan. However, based on Market demanding, Ankai would continue its R&D of hybrid bus to make cost of hybrid bus the same as conventional bus.
New-energy Bus Below 10m Unsuitable for Market Demanding
Subsidy of buses of 6-8m and 8-10m is added to the new subsidy policy. Xiong said that Ankai launched new-energy buses below 10m based on the policy. But prospect of this type is not clear now. He explained that bus of 6-8m was usually operated on branch routes, price of which was very low. Cost of purchasing pure electric bus is higher which lacks competitiveness than conventional bus.
In the previous interview with Yutong, Zhongtong and Golden Dragon, these three enterprises said that they would launch relative pure electric buses based on policy guidance with a conservative attitude. One inside staff of Yutong said that if bus of 6-10m was defined as micro public bus, its passenger capacity would not be much at high cost. 6-10m bus can just be suitable for being used as shuttle bus or official business bus. Some official of Golden Dragon said that one 7m pure electric bus they once manufactured was of small sales volume. Though new policy would motivate some beneficial effect, detailed manufacturing plan would be decided by market demanding.