The wheels on the bus roll toward communism in Los Angeles.
To eliminate public transit emissions by 2030, the California metropolis has retired its fleet of big diesel buses, started retiring their cleaner natural gas-burning buses, and replaced them with brand-new, zero-emission electric buses. The problem? They don’t run, they are expensive, and they’re Chinese.
Those problems didn’t cross the mind of Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti when he hailed the buses he thought would carry Los Angeles into the future. “We have two choices,” Garcetti said last July. “We can wait for others, and follow, at the expense of residents’ health — or lead and innovate, and reduce emissions as quickly as possible. I’d much rather do the latter.”
It’s been a rocky road ever since, and that could complicate Garcetti’s political future as he considers a presidential bid in 2020. That’s because the buses are awful even by public transit standards.
They run quiet when they run at all. An investigative report by the Los Angeles Times detailed how the buses can’t climb hills, how the buses break down frequently, how the buses aren’t reliable after being driven more than 100 miles. The first five buses were so bad that they had to be pulled off their routes after less than five miles.
Other cities like Albuquerque, N.M., experienced similar problems when they tried switching to electric buses. The city ordered a fleet of 20, but the AP reports that their performance was so poor the city quickly canceled the order and switched back to natural gas and clean diesel.
Los Angeles didn’t learn that lesson. Despite the obvious and systematic drawbacks, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation announced in April a $36 million grant to purchase 112 zero-emission electric buses. And the state of California either doesn’t know that those buses break down or the state of California doesn’t care. According to the California Energy Commission, the state has spent nearly $80 million on electric vehicle infrastructure.
But while that is bad news for commuters trying to catch the buses, it’s great news for the Chinese company that builds the 60-foot lemons.
The company in question is BYD, which stands for “Build Your Dreams.” Thanks to Garcetti, Los Angeles has definitely been the Chinese company’s California dream. Poor performance hasn’t hurt their profits. To meet the subsidized demand, the company has even shipped some production to the United States. Industry magazine Clean Technica reports that BYD has “expand[ed] its Lancaster factory in hopes of booming orders in the coming years, having recently tripled the square footage in the factory and, more recently, adding a parts warehouse to the facility.”
By the time 2020 rolls around, Garcetti will have to explain why his government paid millions to a Chinese company for buses that barely run.
