Busworld East Asia won’t be the only new exhibition for Busworld in 2019: Busworld Central Asia has its premiere in Almaty, Kazakhstan and Busworld Europe, the mother exhibition who is celebrating its 25th edition in 2019, is having its own premiere by moving from Kortrijk to Brussels. In Jakarta, vehicles of Laksana, Daimler and Volvo will be presented.
Chinese electric city bus market is close to saturation, thus Chinese manufacturers will look with increasing determination to European and overseas markets. In the meanwhile, global electric bus market is expected to reach over 160,000 units delivered yearly by 2025 (today we have around 2,200 electric buses in circulation in Europe and approximately 400,000 worldwide, 99 % of them in China). In 2018, in Europe the electric buses delivered were around 650 (excluding trolleybuses). These are just some figures among the many provided by Interact Analysis reserachers during a webinarg, held this morning, focused on “The European Electric Bus Market: Industry Outlook”.
In 2017 Chinese cities were supplied 99 per cent of the electric buses delivered worldwide. A share that is expected to dramatically decrease to 80 percent by 2025, according to Interact Analysis’ forecasts. In that year, the units delivered worldwide will be 160,000. Interstingly, the market of intercity electric buses will grow to a 31 per cent share, leaving city buses the remaining 69 per cent. Big news will come from India, that has the potential to become the second largest electric bus market, as Interact Analysis already pointed out.
As widely known, the switch to battery electric public transport is highly politically driven and related to the commitment of states and municipalities. Paris leads the transition with a target of 4/5 electric buses out of 4,500 by 2025. Barcelona wants a 8 % electric fleet by 2024. London aims to a zero emission bus fleet in 2037, Brussels has the same target in 2030. In Gothenburg 95 % of the transportation will be based on renewables energy sources by 2025.
Looking at the main electric bus manufacturers, a worldwide glance to the sales volumes see five Chinese manufacturers in the first five places: they are Yutong, BYD, Zhongtong Bus, CRRC, Foton. Excluding Chinese market, the chart consists of BYD, Proterra, Yutong, VDL, Solaris.
Looking to Europe, where in 2018 around 650 electric buses were delivered, VDL appears, according to Interact Analysis findings, the market leader in the field of electric buses above 6 ton (excluding trolleybuses). The Dutch company «spurred on by strong domestic demand, nearly doubled the number of electric buses it delivered in 2018 compared to the previous year», Interact Analysis’ researcher Rueben Scriven pointed out. Let’s take a couple of examples: the 43 electric buses supplied in Eindhoven in 2017 and the 100 buses delivered to Connexxion (Transdev) in 2018 for the routes around Schipol airport. Anyway, VDL is closely followed by Solaris: the two manufacturers have a market share of 15 and 14% respectively.
