Chile opens its first electric bus factory

Reuters Videos
2 年前

STORY: Location: Rancagua, Chile

This is Chile's first electric bus factory

which aims to ease the country's fossil fuel dependency

[Ricardo Repenning, Co-founder / Reborn Electric Motors]

“This is the first electric bus plant in Latin America, specifically in Chile, the first in Chile’s history. We have two lines of business – the heavy-duty buses, which is operating at Codelco’s El Teniente mine, the world’s largest underground mine. The second is the circular economy, in which we withdraw the diesel engine from buses, we set up lithium batteries, an electric engine and a control system so can we get an affordable zero-emissions bus.”

Reborn Electric Motor builds the buses from scratch

and converts existing diesel buses by

- taking out the tank

- installing lithium-ion batteries

- and adding an electric motor

The company aims to produce 200 electric buses a year

enough to keep some 70,000 tons of carbon out of the atmosphere