北京清洁能源公交车

Motor vehicles are the biggest source of pollutants in Beijing.  So the city is encouraging the use of clean energy vehicles, including electric buses. Our reporter, Wang Hui, visited the Division of Electric Buses of Beijing’s Public Transport Group to see how these buses work.

The Division of Electric Buses of Beijing’s Public Transport Group runs almost all the no-track electric buses in the city. It owns about three hundred of them, but this only makes up a small fraction of the total buses in Beijing.

The blue logo, standing for Electric Vehicle, distinguishes the conventional buses from the green ones by appearance. But the core difference is inside.

This is a conventional bus. This part is empty. Now here's a new electric bus. This part is like two big boxes. What are they? This is the big secret. Batteries! It usually takes 20 minutes for a full charge. There's another group of electric buses with the old type battery, which needs 2 hours.

A driver can also feel the changes brought by the new buses.

For a conventional vehicle, this part is a compressor gun for gas, but for an electric bus, it has become three contact spots. Just like a giant outlet. There are 15 big chargers in this station, serving about 30 buses.

Despite the merits, the 600,000 yuan battery price makes those no-track electric buses 50 percent more expensive than conventional ones. The small number of available charging stations also limits their popularity.

Beijing Public Transport Group dominates ownership of buses in the city. Besides the no-track electric buses, it also runs other kinds of environmentally-friendly vehicles, including those fueled by natural gas, and electric buses with tracks.

The group plans to buy 2,400 green buses this year. The number will exceed 10,000 by the end of 2020, making up about 50 percent of the total in Beijing.