BYD receives first order from Romania

BYD books its first electric bus order from Romania. The city of Buzău orders nine 12-metre electric buses, which will be operated by Transbus Buzău. The majority of the vehicles will be manufactured at BYD’s production facility in Komárom in neighbouring Hungary.

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Many cities in Romania are currently ordering electric buses. The biggest beneficiary is the Polish manufacturer Solaris, which has recently won a series of orders. In Baia Mare, Galați and Cluj-Napoca, almost 100 trolleybuses from Poland are already on the road, and further orders from Ploiești and Craiova are currently being processed. Just a few days ago, the Romanian cities of Brașov and Târgu Jiu ordered 25 and eleven trolleybuses respectively from Solaris.

This makes it all the more important for competitor BYD to gain a foothold in the Romanian market. The order from Buzău, a city with about 100,000 inhabitants in the south-east of the country, includes new units of BYD’s 12-metre bus. The company describes the model as its best-selling bus model in Europe. In total, more than 1,500 electric buses have now been delivered or ordered throughout Europe, BYD says. As examples of recent deliveries, BYD cites 22 electric buses that went to Paris last year, or ten units that the city of Pécs in Hungary took delivery of in August.

Update 18 February 2021: Only three weeks after the first order from Romania, BYD has received a second order for electric buses from the country. The port city of Constanța on the Black Sea has ordered 20 purely electric 12-metre buses including charging infrastructure from the manufacturer. The handover is planned for the beginning of 2022. For Constanța, these will be the first electric buses ever, according to the BYD announcement. Like the nine buses for Buzău, the vehicles will be built in Komárom, Hungary.

bydeurope.com, bydeurope.com (update)