Chinese Automaker BYD Delivers First Electric Truck to US Freight

BYD Motors Inc. is supplying 11 zero-emission battery electric trucks to SF Goodwill for use in the San Francisco region collecting and transporting donations.

The 10 delivery trucks and one refuse truck will be assembled at BYD Motors’ facility in Lancaster.

SF Goodwill, which serves San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin counties, will use the delivery trucks for collections and to transport donations among its stores and drop off locations and the refuse truck as a debris hauler for transporting unsold collections to reuse and recycling centers.

“This deployment with Goodwill for BYD electric trucks will show the skeptics that zero emission technology is reliable and ready for wide-scale use in medium- and heavy-duty trucking applications,” Stella Li, president of BYD Motors, said in a statement.

BYD showcased the latest advancements in battery-electric buses, trucks and materials handling equipment this week at the 2017 ACT Expo, May 1-4, at the Long Beach Convention Center.

“BYD continues to lead the industry with its advanced battery technologies that make electric buses, trucks and materials handling equipment cost competitive with other alternative fuel vehicle options today,” said Stella Li, president of BYD Motors. “BYD provides the safest battery available today in the electric vehicle market; our battery reliability also gives fleet managers the assurance they need that these vehicles will operate just as needed for any service route.”

Li continued, “Additionally, our BYD vehicles provide for significant operational cost savings in the range of up to tens of thousands of dollars per year per vehicle over the lifetime of the vehicle.”

BYD will showcase several advanced, zero-emission all-electric transportation and equipment applications at ACT Expo 2017 including:

  • BYD 8Y Battery Electric Terminal Tractor: BYD’s class 8 terminal tractor provides 15 hours of continuous operation and offers operational cost savings of more than $27,000 annually (assuming operations 16 hours a day/seven days a week).
  • BYD 8R Battery Electric Refuse Truck: BYD’s 10-ton payload refuse truck provides 76 miles of range with minimal battery degradation. Fleet managers can expect more than $13,000 of operational cost savings annually based on service routes of 60 miles per day/five days a week. Manufactured in the City of Lancaster, California, the BYD refuse truck is compliant with FMVSS and CMVSS regulations.
  • BYD K11 60 ft. Articulated Bus: BYD’s 60 ft. battery-electric articulated bus is the latest addition to company’s line up of transit buses is the first of its kind available in the U.S. and provides 200 miles of range on a single charge with full charging completed within two to three hours. The 60 ft. articulated bus joins BYD’s other industry leading 30, 35, and 40 ft. low floor Buy America compliant transit buses with a 275-mile range.
  • BYD All-Electric ECB 25 Forklift: BYD’s ECB 25 battery-electric forklift provides ultra-fast full-charging completed in one to two hours maximum. The BYD electric forklift can run for two typical shifts on one charge and can be opportunity charged, whenever and wherever. The electric forklift also comes with BYD’s industry-leading 10-year full replacement battery warranty.

All BYD battery electric technologies displayed at ACT Expo can charge at 40 kW, 80 kW, 100 kW, or 200 kW rates, requiring between one and five hours of charging time depending on the model and selected charger.  Even after 12 years of use, BYD’s battery capacity is projected to remain above 70 percent of the original capacity.

This year BYD is taking a bold step forward to unveil a new line up of battery-powered vehicle applications, giving customers more options to save on fuel and operations costs by going all- electric,” said Stella Li, President of BYD Motors. “As a battery company first and foremost, we know this technology is safe and ready for widespread use in a variety of applications. And with our industry-leading, 12-year-battery warranty, fleet managers can be assured these vehicles will operate reliably for the entire life of the vehicle, allowing them to save tens of thousands of dollars per year per vehicle over the lifetime of the vehicle.”

While many of us here at CleanTechnica have been pulling for BYD to bring its passenger vehicles (PHEVs and EVs) to the US for direct sales to consumers for a long time now, the move into electric trucks is a much more logical next step and is right in line with the Master Plan it has been working on all along.

BYD’s new lineup for North America will be built just a few miles outside of Los Angeles, California, in sunny Lancaster. We toured the facility in September last year and were impressed with the flexibility of the factory as well as the high-tech approach to building high-end electric vehicles for fleet applications.

The introduction of trucks to the lineup is a natural extension of this existing competency, with the main difference being a vehicle designed to carry tons of cargo vs a vehicle designed to carry lots of humans around town. They both leverage BYD’s competency in building high-power, long-range vehicles that take advantage of BYD’s mastery of batteries.

These new trucks all feature the same tech that BYD perfected in its buses:

Environmentally friendly: no heavy metals or toxic electrolytes
High-efficiency, permanent magnet synchronous motors
Regenerative braking extends battery life and reduces brake component wear
Into that mix, BYD dropped another sweet piece of tech — Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) — that really takes these trucks to the next level. Can you plug a diesel truck into your business and power it for 20 days in the event of a power outage? Didn’t think so.

BYD customers are saving thousands of dollars in annual maintenance costs, due to these all-electric vehicles requiring lower maintenance on propulsion systems, fewer fluids to change, less brake wear due to cutting-edge regenerative braking technology, and fewer moving parts.

BYD designs their vehicles to fit in seamlessly to any fleet with an advanced vehicle-to-grid system allowing the vehicle to deliver power back to the grid, to a load, or to another vehicle without any disruptions. Committed to job creation in Southern California, BYD employs more than 600 skilled workers at its manufacturing facility in the city of Lancaster, Los Angeles County, California.

The project is funded through California’s cap-and-trade program, with matching funds from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and an in-kind match from SF Goodwill.

BYD Motors is the U.S. subsidiary of Chinese electric vehicle and battery manufacturer BYD Co. Ltd. Its Lancaster facility opened in 2013 and now employs more than 400 workers.