Porterville, California, is about to make transportation history. The little Californian city only receives an average of 13 inches of rain a year, which makes it particularly vulnerable to atmospheric inversion, which holds in the exhausts from vehicles, agriculture, and other sources. Thanks to a determined city hall, the number of Stage 1 smog alerts declined from over 100 per year, in the 1970s, to almost zero. On December 7, the California Air Resources Board awarded $9.5-million to replace its entire bus fleet. By January, 2018, Porterville should have America’s first 100% electric municipal bus system.
Forget all the hassle in the United States, the BYD Electric Transit Bus has just earned Canadian Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (CMVSS) Certification. The company “that can” has been placed on Transport Canada’s Vehicle Manufacturers Registry. According to their news release, this is supposed to include “several standards” that are “beyond the U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.” Canada approves BYD.
One of BYD’s electric buses drove 325km (202 miles) on a single charge, at the end of which they still had 8% of battery charge remaining. This is more than the 310 km record set last year, when BYD drove from Warsaw to Krakow, Poland. BYD has set a new European eBus record.
