Yesterday (04/28/2014), Chinese auto maker BYD delivered two electric buses, which are build in its Lancaster, CA factory.
The BYD electric bus can hold a charge for a full day (24 hrs) and go with a range of 155 miles. It will be charged in the night during the off-peak hours. These first two California-build buses are delivered to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Below is the BYD electric bus running in LAX airport.
BYD Auto setup its USA headquarters in Downtown Los Angeles. Currently its Lancaster factory has around 50 employees, and BYD plans to hire 50 more by the end of this year. According to the auto maker, it will increase the production volume to 1,000 units/year within 5 years, and by that time the factory will employ around 1,000 workers. BYD also invested in a battery factory in the city of Lancaster too.
For the bus, BYD purchase the aluminum material in US, and ship them oversea and weld the frame of the bus in China, and then ship the half-finished frame back to Lancaster for final assembling. The reason why BYD does not build the bus frame locally in US, is because the newly hired workers are not fully familiar with the production process at this moment, and it takes some time for BYD to train them.
It is interesting to see that on the same day, Toyota USA officially announced its plan to move its California headquarters to Texas. Currently Toyota USA pays the city of Torrance a taxable assessed value of $473 million for properrty tax, and also $203,037 in water revenue. By losing a significant funding resource, the city of Torrance’s credit rating is downgraded from Aa2 to Aa1 by Moody.
Currently the city of Torrance is actively seeking companies to rent the Toyota headquarters buildings, which will be fully vacated by 2017. So who will be the new tenant of this property? Will it be BYD North America? I do not know at this moment, but I cannot rule out the possibility too.
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