The national bus and coach show on 17 September in Brisbane was a big showy affair designed to raise expectations on the future of electric vehicles in both buses and transport vehicles.
Just to underscore the occasion and the potential, one of Australia’s leading bus and transport companies, GoZero Group, signed a deal just ahead of the event to acquire the manufacturer and has flagged approval from BusTech after it was placed into voluntary administration in early August.
BusTechcompany employs more than 270 employees across its Queensland and South Australia warehouses, manufacturing diesel, hybrid and zero-emission buses.
Administrators of Greyhouse Partners were confident that the company would find a buyer given its interest from 29 potential purchasers, according to media statements.
GoZero Group already has similar staff numbers, employing more than 300 staff across its subsidiaries. These include Nexport, an electric bus provider for public, school and private transport; NSBC, one of the largest bus charter companies based in NSW; and Foton Mobility, which distributes zero-emission electric trucks and other public transport.
The Fifth Estate attended the expo and spoke to chief commercial officer John Featherstone who was in attendance to was keen to announce the company’s rollout of its electric buses in regional NSW.
He said that the company had strong ambitions to meet the NSW government’s goals in its Zero Emission Buses Transition Plan, which hopes to decarbonise buses in regional NSW completely by 2047.
Watch the full interview below:
According to the Australasian Bus and Coach, organisers of the show, Nexport was the first company to deploy zero emission buses in Australia in 2017. It supplied six electric buses to Sydney Airport and the first 58 electric buses to Transport for NSW in December 2020.
Featherstone said that the company’s electric buses, which comprise many of NSW’s “breathe easy” buses, had reduced weight than regular buses.
They have extra internal space and the ability to charge in multiple ways, such as pantographic (wireless) and plug-in charging.
He noted that electric buses were quieter, featured regenerative braking from kinetic energy, and outside of the purchase price, they offered lower operational costs thanks to their better safety features, including a system that monitors the driver’s safety performance.
Featherstone added that the company also has five different types of buses. While it started with an AC design popular in Europe, it’s now moving towards DC designs, which connect photovoltaic arrays to the battery by a DC connection and are generally faster charging. The buses can now be found in public and private fleets across Queensland, Tasmania and South Australia.
The crossover between property and public transport
Featherstone said transport-oriented development (TOD) that promotes higher-density development around transport nodes is a great opportunity for his company.
While Featherstone wasn’t aware of the NSW initiatives, he says that he had seen a movement towards TODs in Queensland. An example was one client, Westside Christian College, which has ambitions to become completely self-sufficient in energy, including purchasing electric buses, installing solar panels, having plans for battery storage and offering power back to the local community through the grid.
“It’s certainly in Queensland, there’s thoughts around Queensland in having these precincts through state-owned property, whether it’s schools, hospitals [and other] entities, where you share power.”
He added that CS Energy, the state-owned electricity provider, was a key player in these developments.
“For some governments, it’s really having a plan around power. The assets are the easiest part; it’s about ‘do you have enough electrons to run the assets?”.
“It’s about future proofing your infrastructure; it’s really about the sweet spot between [having] the energy supply, site capability and the asset, those three things need to come together in order to run a sustainable program.”
More on the acquisition
While the arrangement will be finalised in the coming month once the state government approves the merger, GoZero Group managing director Stephen Cartwright called on the state government to fast-track its approvals to ensure BusTech employees across Adelaide and Brisbane remained employed during this period. Employees had previously been temporarily stood down until 2 September.
The acquisition is expected to make the company the largest local bus manufacturer and bolster its manufacturing capability in states outside of its bus factory in New South Wales.
Cartwright added that the acquisition helped solve the local bus manufacturing sector’s “chicken and egg” problem, where governments often expect manufacturers to have already invested in scaled capability prior to being offered new bus orders.
“This is an important acquisition for GoZero Group.
“It will protect local manufacturing jobs in both Queensland and South Australia at a time when the employment market remains uncertain,” Cartwright said.
He said he was extremely confident in the future of the bus manufacturing sector in Australia, saying the message to all tiers of government was clear; “We support a Future Made in Australia, and we stand ready to help you reach your strategic zero emission targets and provide safer, cleaner public transport for all Australians.
“For every bus we build in Australia, five Australian jobs are created or retained. Buses are the most used mode of public transport ahead of all other modes. In NSW alone, buses account for well over 40 per cent of all public passengers, making over 300 million journeys a year.
Notably, the GoZero Group was one of the only local sponsors of the show; other expo sponsors included two Chinese-owned manufacturers, Volvo and Yutong, UK-owned Distinctive Systems, and Swiss-owned ABB.
“GoZero Group’s manufacturing strategy is to maximise local supply chain content in buses, supplemented with select strategic collaborations with proven international suppliers,” said Cartwright.
The Fifth Estate attended the expo as a guest of Yutong.