BYD Electric Box Truck Is BYD’s Next Electric Model

BYD certainly doesn’t have the rock star appeal of Tesla (though, it’s BYD Qin plug-in hybrid is apparently quite popular on the Chinese market). However, it has been a strong leader in the electric vehicle space. It has its e6, an electric car that has found its way into a number of taxi fleets; the Qin noted above; and I think most importantly, an electric bus that is cost-competitive with conventional buses, but much cleaner. It’s also a big battery innovator (that’s the primary expertise of founder, chairman, executive director, and president Wang Chuan-fu) and has recently begun production of lithium manganese iron phosphate batteries.

 

With all of that background plus the realization that we really need to electrify our trucks, not just cars and buses, I was psyched to see that BYD has just introduced an electric truck. Steve Hanley of GAS2 has more details in this Important Media cross-post:

Originally published on GAS2
By Steve Hanley

BYD, China’s largest maker of electric commercial vehicles, has recently introduced a new all-electric box truck called the T5. And though it has a range of 400 kilometers/250 miles per charge, it has a top speed of 50 kph, or about 31 MPH, making it ideal for delivery duty in China’s congested cities, but not much else.

The T5 will face stiff competition in the market place. Small trucks in China are almost as inexpensive as televisions and fuel prices are very low compared to other countries. That means the central government will need to provide hefty incentives to buyers to get them to pass up a conventional truck for one of BYD’s electric models. The company also builds a smaller T3 and a larger T7, though the electric T5 is the only one that has a battery pack, which is mounted underneath the cargo area between the front and rear axles.

China has enormous air pollution problems resulting from having millions of cheap vehicles with few if any pollution controls on its roads. If China can convert a significant percentage of the cargo trucks in its cities to electric models, that would go a long way toward improving urban air quality. We reported last week on a program to bring electric trucks to smoggy Southern California. Both here and in China, the days of the diesel-powered urban delivery truck are numbered, hopefully.

Source: Car News China