Equipped with Microvast's ultra-fast charging battery, a Foton electric bus stops by a charging point after a few loops of operation. Trained staff plug in the charger and within 10-15 minutes the electric bus's battery is refilled to maximum operating capacity and ready to go again.
Texas-based Microvast, which supplies the battery technology, said this now happens everyday in many bus terminals across metropolitan Beijing.
And among all the ultra-fast EV charging stations, the newly opened charging station in Xiaoying Public Transit Bus Terminal is the largest ultra-fast EV charging station in the world.
Located in Chaoyang district, Beijing, and built by China State Grid, this new charging complex covers an area of 26,500 sqm with its structures covering 1,575 sqm.
Designed to satisfy the growing charging demand especially from the increase of ultra-fast charging electric buses departing from this terminal, this complex provides the infrastructure to charge 30 buses at the same time.
A number of Beijing’s bus transit routes, such as the Route 13 have upgraded from natural gas powered buses to electric buses from Chinese company Foton, which all use the same battery technology from Microvast. Each new bus takes only 10-15 minutes to complete recharging the battery and takes place 2-3 times a day, during driver breaks.
Compared to an earlier battery swapping system adopted by Beijing to experiment on improving the efficiency of slow-charge battery-powered electric buses, the ultra-fast charging “battery + charger” system needs neither the investment and large storage space for extra batteries, nor high cost complex automated robotic battery pack swapping infrastructure.
With future facility and charging point expansions already planned for 2016-2020, to accommodate more routes converting to fast charge EV, the Chinese Government expects terminals such as Xiaoying Terminal Charge will play a greater role in the development of clean energy public transit system in Beijing.
