BYD, ST and Yutong share Singapore electric bus order

Singapore has contracted three companies with an order for 60 electric buses to be delivered in 2019/ 2020. The contracts went to BYD, ST Engineering and Yutong-NARI. At the same time, Singapore Power announced their plan to build 1,000 charging points in the city-state.

The order for the electric buses came from the Singapore Land Transport Authority (LTA), and has a total value of 50 million dollars. While ST Engineering and BYD will each be providing 20 electric buses valued at 17, and 15 million dollars, respectively. The order for Yutong-NARI comprises ten single-floor e-buses and ten electric double deckers for a total of 18 million dollars.

In addition, the LTA is planning to acquire another 50 hybrid buses. These will be purchased for 30 million dollars from Volvo.

Meanwhile, the SP Group has publicly announced their plan to install 1,000 charging points in Singapore by 2020. That is twice the originally announced number. The network will consist of 50 kW stations, with several 350 kW stations planned as well. The first 30 charging points will take up operation before the end of this year. The cost was not announced so far.

Singapore is somewhat lagging behind in terms of electric mobility. LTA statistics show that the current total of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in the nation were at 443 and 323 vehicles. The total amount of vehicles in the nation is around 615,000. For taxis, the number of EVs is 97 of the 21,000 in the country. For buses and trucks, the number of EVs is 42 of the 160,000 operating currently, while the number of electric motorcycles is only 2, with 136,588 running in the country.

The country has been catching up however, and recently made headlines in connection with electric mobility, as the vacuum specialist Dyson announced plans to build their first EV factory in the city-state. The construction will begin this year, and the production of the first Dyson EV will take place in 2021.

straitstimes.com (E-buses), businesstimes.com.sg, straitstimes.com (Both charging network)