By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
From TimeOut
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Cleaning up London’s air is clearly on the agenda of London’s newly re-elected mayor Sadiq Khan – and those emission-reducing ambitions were recently re-affirmed with the news that the city’s ‘Boris Buses’ are getting the boot.
And wow, we’ve got more London bus news. The Mayor just approved a deal between Go-Ahead Group (a UK transport company) and Chinese automaker BYD to build over 100 electric double-decker buses for London’s streets.
Each of the buses will apparently cost around £400,000, which is supposedly around £100,000 cheaper than what can be offered by UK suppliers.
However, the deal is not without its controversy. According to City AM, back in 2021 the United Nations wrote to BYD stating it had ‘received information’ that the company’s supply chain involved ‘alleged forced labour, arbitrary detention and trafficking of Uyghur [Muslims] and other minority workers’.
In response to that, TfL’s head of bus business development Tom Cunnington said: ‘We have been assured by the manufacturer that no unethical practices have taken place and would act immediately if provided with evidence to the contrary.”
We’ve been assured? Well BYD would say that, wouldn’t they!
I suppose we should not complain that TfL are saving money. The real question is how much cheaper would a diesel bus have been?
One US study suggested diesel would be about two thirds the price of an electric bus, while Wright, who make buses, quote typical costs from between £250,000 and £500,000.
I suspect though that TfL would have been bragging if they had actually saved money, so I think we can assume they have paid well over the odds.
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May 26, 2024 at 11:31AM
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