The Chinese bus and truck manufacturer, Foton, continues to advance in its transport electrification projects. Recently, it signed an agreement for 1,022 units of electric urban buses worth close to 238 million dollars.
The deal marks the largest ever order for Chinese-made electric city buses for the foreign market, which will additionally catapult FOTON to first place in the Chilean new energy vehicle market. Following the order of 1,000 electric buses in India in 2020, FOTON has once again set a new record for Chinese electric buses in overseas markets. It should be remembered that the largest order to date in Latin America corresponded to the 1,002 BYD units that were awarded to the Transmilenio system in Bogotá.
Currently, more than 300 units of FOTON electric buses, which represent almost 40% of the electric bus fleet of Santiago, are operating without problems in the metropolitan area of the capital city of Chile. After the arrival of 1,022 units of FOTON electric buses in Chile, the FOTON electric bus fleet will become the largest in Latin America. FOTON won the first Chilean order for 215 units of new energy buses in November 2019, ushering in a new era of public transportation in Chile.
In 2021, FOTON won an order for 138 units of new energy city buses from Chile and thus became one of the major players in the local electric bus market. So far, it has established a strong presence in Chile, helping cities across the country reduce carbon emissions. In January 2021, FOTON officially joined the Zero Emission Bus Rapid-Deployment Accelerator (also known as ZEBRA), a project that was jointly launched by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) and the C40 Cities Network. The project, with a total investment of more than one billion dollars, aims to put more than 3,000 electric urban bus units into circulation in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Colombia.
As one of the suppliers of new energy vehicles for ZEBRA, FOTON is fully committed to sustainable development and dedicated to reducing carbon emissions and improving the mobility of people in Latin America. In the context of decarbonization, governments around the world have been actively promoting the commercial operation of electric vehicles.
The country aspires to have its entire public transportation network powered by electricity by 2040. As one of the major players in the electric commercial vehicle industry, FOTON has a wide range of new energy-powered vehicle products that are specially designed for various transportation scenarios.
Up to now, FOTON new energy city buses have established their presence in India, Egypt, Malta, New Zealand, Australia, etc., working for public transportation networks, fully showing their high reliability and technological strengths. In addition, FOTON iBlue new energy trucks and vans have already obtained the EU WVTA certificate and operated in Germany, Singapore, Australia and Thailand.