De Lijn orders up to 500 electric buses from BYD

The electric buses produced by BYD in Hungary are to be delivered to De Lijn from 2025. According to the Dutch company, the order for the first tranche represents an investment volume of over 43 million euros. “With this order, De Lijn is consistently pursuing the greening of its fleet with the aim of offering completely emission-free public transport by 2035,” said Ann Schoubs, CEO of De Lijn.

According to the public transport operator, the 12-metre BYD buses will have “customer-friendly features”, such as USB charging points, an electric ramp, extra-wide screens, LED lighting and seats with recycled leather. Further details on the vehicles ordered are not known.

The framework agreement with BYD is part of a procurement process launched by De Lijn at the end of March 2022: the Flemish public transport company plans to purchase up to 1,250 electric buses between 8.5 and 24 metres in length.

For future orders of standard electric buses, De Lijn reserves the option of drawing on both this new framework agreement with BYD and an earlier framework agreement concluded with Van Hool and VDL in 2021. 60 fixed 12-metre electric buses ordered from these two manufacturers are currently being successively commissioned. A further 17 have been ordered from VDL so far.

At the beginning of 2023, De Lijn also awarded Iveco a framework agreement for the delivery of up to 500 electric buses by 2030. This initially included a firm order for 65 fully electric articulated buses. De Lijn now states that it has 109 e-buses on order from Iveco. In addition, six electric midibuses have been ordered from the Scandinavian supplier Yes-EU.

In order to offer completely emission-free public transport by 2035, De Lijn not only wants to electrify its own bus fleet, but also plans to “make around 50 depots environmentally friendly”.

delijn.prezly.com (in Dutch)