BYD Plans to Bring its First Electric Vehicle to the U.S. Late This Year

BYD Plans to Bring its First Electric Vehicle to the U.S. Late This Year «

BYD Plans to Bring its First Electric Vehicle to the U.S. Late This Year

Chinese auto manufacturer BYD Auto plans to join the ever-growing list of automakers that are, or will be, offering highway-capable battery electric vehicles in the U.S. market. Its BYD e6 is a pretty impressive vehicle – both in looks and performance –and especially because of its claimed range between charges. The question in the minds of many is whether BYD can deliver a production EV that meet its claims since it has delayed introduction several times now. While delays like this are not common with models from established automakers in the U.S., it’s seemingly not so unusual in the emerging EV market.

Initially, U.S. sales were planned for late 2010, but recently this has been rescheduled to the end of 2011 with initial deliveries of 50 e6s to fleet customers in Southern California. Among these customers is the City of Los Angeles, which has agreed to purchase 10 e6s and lease another 20. Private party consumer sales is not scheduled to begin until 2012.

The e6 is a five-passenger all-electric crossover vehicle. If it looks like it should be powered by an internal combustion engine, that’s because it is based on BYD’s conventionally powered F6 platform. BYD plans to sell the e6 for somewhat over $40,000 in the U.S., about $8.000 more than the electric Nissan Leaf.

The e6 uses BYD’s own large format prismatic batteries with lithium-ion iron phosphate chemistry. According to BYD, all chemical substances used in the battery can be recycled. The battery pack is fully integrated into the vehicle and is located in a protected compartment Charged via a 220 volt/10 amp household electric power outlet, a quick charge to 50 percent capacity is claimed to be a rather impressive 10 minutes, with 80 percent state-of-charge achieved in only about 15 minutes.

BYD says the e6 will be offered with four powerplant options. These include a version with a 75 101 horsepower motor and another with 215 horsepower. These versions use a front mounted, permanent-magnet synchronous motors driving the front wheels. Two additional variants add a second, rear-mounted 54 horsepower motor to provide all-wheel-drive. These models provides 155 and 269 horsepower, respectively.

When shown at the 2010 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, BYD quoted a range of 205 miles. More recently, this has been updated to 186 miles, a shorter but still impressive figure for an electric vehicle. An earlier BYD F3e prototype electric vehicle featured a claimed range of 186 miles. BYD says its batteries have a projected a battery life of 2,000 cycles, for a lifetime range of about 373,000 miles.

Since May 2010, Pengcheng Electric Taxi Co. has been field testing 40 e6 electric taxis in Shenzhen, China. It will add more to reach a fleet of 100. These have a range of 186 miles and an 87 mph top speed, like the e6.