BYD has completed delivery of 4 all-electric 30-foot coach buses to the Kansas City International Airport — with the buses now slated to be used as parking lots shuttles, transporting airport patrons to and from airport terminals — according to a new press release.
This delivery makes the Kansas City International Airport the first airport in the US to utilize all-electric buses for passenger service. Elsewhere in the world, all-electric buses are a bit more common as passenger service transport at airports, but the US has been lagging behind to date in that regard, so this news is fairly notable.
CleanTechnica provides more: “The airport shuttles were custom built for service in the airport at the BYD Bus and Coach Factory in Lancaster, California. That means they include luggage racks, among other things.
“Airports represent significant sources of emissions in and around major cities due to the high-density emissions from air travel and the concentration of ground transportation utilized to get passengers in and out of terminals. While four buses is not going to have a significant impact on the emissions from Kansas City International Airport, it is a symbolic step that will show other airports just how well suited electric buses and shuttles are for airports.”
The recent expansion of the Lancaster, California, BYD electric bus facility means that the China-based BYD will be capable of constructing up to 1,500 battery-electric buses a year at the Lancaster site once running at peak capacity. While those numbers don’t sound particularly high, they still represent a large proportion of US electric bus production capacity.