April 1 is tagged as the Fool's day and often celebrated by playing around hoaxes and spreading jokes. When Chinese electric vehicle major BYD recently introduced world's longest pure electric bus in Shenzhen, China on the same day, the news was taken as a joke in the first place. BYD then followed a series of tweets to assure its latest portfolio addition is serious business for future environment needs.

BYD’s new K12A is a bi-articulated bus, which is 27m long and has the capacity of around 250 passengers. BYD first unveiled its public transportation electrification solution in 2010, and is now taking the lead in the field of pure electric buses across China. Stella Li, Senior Vice President, BYD, said the K12A will bring zero emissions to BRT systems, allowing passengers to enjoy quiet, pollution-free travel, while at the same time saving significant maintenance costs for operators.

The K12A features an all-aluminum alloy body for light weight structure and BYD's core technologies of batteries, electric motors and electronic controls and has been developed for TransMilenio's Bus Rapid Transit system. The battery-equipped K12A has the capacity to travel up to 300 km on a single charge and can attain a maximum speed of 70kmph. The interesting features of the bus include a distributed 4WD system, which allows the bus to switch between 2WD and 4WD smoothly to meet the demands of different terrains, while also lowering the vehicle's overall energy consumption. K12A follows BYD's battery heat management system, energy regenerative system and smart integrated design and is equipped with DC and AC charging ports that can be switched freely to meet customer needs.

BYD's K9, the first pure electric bus in the world that boasts of multiple certifications from authoritative European, US and Japanese agencies, began commercial operations in Shenzhen as early as in 2011. BYD's pure electric buses are noted for their performance in energy-saving and environmental protection. Each bus saves the equivalent of 80 tons of CO2 emissions per year, and can save 360,000 litres of fuel throughout its life cycle, claims the company.

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BYD has delivered over 50,000 pure electric buses till date. More specifically, its pure electric buses (longer than 10-m) lead worldwide sales, and holds a dominant share in the pure electric bus market across US, Latin America and the European region. BYD is building a more complete R&D and production presence to respond to a great surge in orders across the globe and has set up factories for pure electric commercial vehicles in China, the US, Brazil, Hungary, and France. BYD's new energy vehicles have led the world in sales for the last four years (2015-2018) and are operating in more than 300 cities, covering over 50 countries across the world.