BAAV AWARDS: PRAISE FOR CHINESE BUS CONSTRUCTORS
This year’s Asian Coach Week led again to a lot of praise from the jury for the fastly developing Chinese bus and coach industry. The Grand Award BAAV BRT bus for example went to the Zhengzhou Yutong model ZK6180MGQA9. By using partly local technology and partly technology acquired from foreign partners, Yutong more or less combined the best of two worlds, according to the Jury, into a vehicle which is reaching a very high technical level with regard to the driveline.
The BAAV Environment Award Bus was shared by the Zhongtong LCK6101GP HEV, a hybrid diesel-electric bus which uses a locally manufactured driveline. Though there were more diesel-electric HEV buses entered for this competition, this one deserves the prize, according to the jury, because it makes use of this local solution, and thus stimulates local research and development.
The prize was jointly received by the Zhengzhou Yutong ZK6125EGAA, which according to the jury deserved this award by the fact that it is the first fuel cell powered bus in China using fuel cells which were completely locally developed and produced by local researchers and industries.
The BAAV Innovation Award went to the Hunan CSR Times Electric TEG6119SHEV
Hunan CSR is a relatively young as a bus manufacturer, having gained its laurels with the production of railbound equipment for public transport. Seeing the possibilities of alternative drivelines in the bus segment, the company decided a couple of years ago to enter this field. Key target is the development of national Chinese EV industry by modularizing the EV drive systems as well as their parts, serializing the R&D and the mass production. With a strategy of technology and market diversification, CTEV aims at manufacturing electric vehicles for specific purposes.
To what successful developments this strategy could lead, was shown by the company during the Asian Coach Week, which she entered with three vehicles, all based on the same basic electrical components: a parallel hybrid drive bus, a fully electric bus, and a serial hybrid drive bus – the first vehicle of this kind ever developed in China with local components. And built with components which are partly the same as used in the electric bus and the diesel electric hybrid. These two facts were for the jury enough reason to propose Hunan CSR Times Electric Vehicle Co for this innovation award.
