Double-decker buses: a London icon more Chinese than British?

LondonNext time you visit London and get on one double-decker to go up and down Oxford Street, the Strand or Whitehall with the aim of obtaining the perfect tourist certificate, they probably won't realize it, but perhaps they will no longer use one of the icons of an era and a city: the famous red double-decker buses, the Routemasters, introduced in 195 and get off while moving. In 2005 they were retired from service and in 2012 the New Routemaster was reintroduced – they called it Borismaster, because Boris Johnson promoted it when he was mayor –, to keep a cultural symbol alive.

The next time they get on a London bus, what they may unknowingly do is certify the unstoppable rise of China as a manufacturer of all types of electric vehicles: especially cars, but also buses and trucks. As is known and perceived by the European Commission, the Asian powerhouse poses a threat—and should also be a stimulus—to the European automotive industry. Manufacturers such as BYD, Nio, Yutong, and Xpeng dominate the supply chain for batteries and critical minerals for electric vehicles, allowing them to produce competitive models at very low prices, or at least lower than European ones.

Furthermore, Chinese brands are rapidly advancing in technological innovation—assisted driving, connectivity, and digitalization—and are directly entering the European market with aggressive strategies, jeopardizing both market share and the European industry's ability to stay at the forefront of electric and digital mobility. What is happening with passenger cars is also happening with bus manufacturing. And what is happening on the continent is also reflected in the islands. To the point that the largest double-decker bus manufacturer, Wrightbus, with a plant in Northern Ireland, sees its business model in danger. And, if not remedied, it says, its survival.

As of March of this year, Transport for London (TFL) has a fleet of 8,797 vehicles to cover the 670 to 700 bus lines that travel daily through Greater London. Of these, 5,748 are electric, hybrid, or hydrogen-powered. The rest, 3,049, are still diesel. The company's commitment is to achieve zero emissions by 2030, which requires significant investment in clean vehicles. Not the entire fleet is double-decker, however. Of the nearly 8,800, there are 6,261, of which 1,192 are diesel, 3,384 hybrid, 1,665 electric, and about twenty powered by hydrogen. Exact data is not available, but of all the electric vehicles, only between 300 and 350 have been produced so far by Wrightbus.

The company's CEO, Jean-Marc Gales, complained to the British press on Monday that rivals such as BYD and Yutong receive huge subsidies from Beijing, allowing them to offer very low prices and putting local manufacturers at risk. For example, the BYD BD11 costs £400,000, has a range of 400 miles, and a battery charging time of about two hours. The Wrightbus equivalent, the StreetDeck Electroliner, while not the manufacturer's cheapest, costs £500,000 and has a range of 200 miles. The battery charging time is 2.5 hours.

Bankruptcy Rescue

Wrightbus has long been fighting a strategic battle to secure regulations requiring all buses operating in the UK to have at least 45% European-made components. This is a requirement in force in France, which, in its words, "has guaranteed stability" for the industry.

Founded in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, and rescued from bankruptcy in 2019 by Jo Bamford, son of the chairman of the industrial and construction group JCB, Wrightbus has grown from 49 to 2,300 employees. By 2025, it expects to reach a turnover of £600 million with 1,180 buses delivered, 90% of which are electric. This year, it overtook BYD in the bus segment. double-decker –something unthinkable three years ago– and aims to reach €1 billion in turnover by reducing production times and increasing exports to markets such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia.

However, Wales insists that a strong domestic market is necessary to have international credibility and be able to export like Beijing does. Chinese manufacturers have an advantage: lower labor costs, gigantic production scales (100,000 buses per year, compared to only 2,000 in the United Kingdom), and large state subsidies. Furthermore, many continue to manufacture diesel buses for the domestic market, while reserving electric buses for Europe, a strategy that generates environmental distortions.

In the United Kingdom, 70% of new buses sold are already electric, a percentage much higher than that of automobiles (20%). Wrightbus controls just over a third of the market, while Chinese manufacturers already have close to 20%. For this reason, the Northern Irish company has promoted alternative divisions, such as the conversion of diesel buses to electric buses for around £250,000 (half the cost of a new one), or the conversion of 18-ton trucks, with an initial project using German DAF models.

These programs open up a potential market similar to that of the entire British bus fleet (around 40,000 vehicles), as only 1% of trucks in the UK are electric. However, current public aid excludes these conversions and limits growth. Wales believes this closes off an affordable avenue to reduce emissions and, above all, to sustain his company in the face of China's rise. Without urgent measures, he warned, China could replicate with buses what it has already achieved with electric cars: a position of global dominance.