Since Monday, June 23rd, the Flemish public transport company De Lijn has officially put its first electric buses, manufactured by the Chinese company BYD, into service. These are the first of 92 e-buses ordered.
At Jacob Autocars, which is part of Hansea, one of the largest private bus companies in Belgium that also provides transport on behalf of De Lijn and the Walloon public transport company TEC, 21 new e-buses were commissioned last week. But these are not BYD buses but MAN Lion’s City E buses.
Antwerp gets 33 buses
De Lijn’s new BYD e-buses will be deployed in the Antwerp region from the Mortsel depot. “After the installation of the peripheral equipment, a familiarization training course followed for the drivers at the depot,” says De Lijn. “Now that the training is sufficiently advanced, the first four e-buses can be put into service.”
Over a third of the 92 Hungarian-built BYD buses, or 33 in total, will end up at the Mortsel depot. The others will go to Bruges, Hasselt, and Winterslag (Genk). The buses have a driving range of 250 kilometers.
De Lijn also currently operates e-buses from Van Hool and VDL, as well as some compact buses from the Chinese state-owned CRRC, through the Finnish distributor Yes-EU.
Just under two weeks ago, De Lijn announced an additional order for 290 e-buses, comprising 140 from BYD, 100 from Iveco, and 50 from VDL in Roeselare.
MAN Lion’s City E buses in Genk
And the Limburg transport company Jacobs Autocars also put 21 new e-buses into service on Saturday. The MAN Lion’s City E buses, with a range of about 350 km, will be used for De Lijn assignments in and around Genk. Forty-two new drivers have also been hired.
Jacobs Autocars is part of Hansea, which already has a fleet of more than 370 MAN e-buses. These buses are produced by MAN Truck & Bus, a Munich-based company that is part of the TRATON Group, a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group.
