GLOBAL REPORT
Van Hool has announced its exit from the City Bus business and focus on Hydrogen fuel cell coaches which appears to have been a serious miscalculation. As the market transitions away from internal combustion engine buses toward battery electric buses, Van Hool has been left behind.
Van Hool recently lost a bid for 300 electric city buses to BYD which assembles their buses in Hungary at a lower cost than Van Hool could manufacture these in Belgium. It was reported that the BYD bid was approximately 20% less than the Van Hool bid. This along with other issues will result in Van Hool ending most if not all of their bus and coach operations in Belgium and transfer the bus and coach making activities to their assembly plant in Macedonia.
However, Van Hool will need a significant cash infusion in a short period of time to cover the cost of their existing debt and the coming redundancy payments in order to stave off insolvency.
Source: Electrive Read The Article
PSR Analysis: Van Hool’s decision to assemble hydrogen fuel cell buses in the coach segment is a good ambition for the longer term and makes good sense for longer distance coaches. However, battery electric buses are currently the solution to zero-emission vehicles for city buses. A big problem Van Hool had was their ability compete on the scale of the larger OEMs let alone a Chinese OEM who has considerable technology and experience and is able to assemble battery electric buses in a low cost country.
While hydrogen fuel would be a very good alternative to the internal combustion engine for the coach segment, this technology is in the very early stages of field testing and will not be ready for significant adoption for at least another 3-5 years, assuming there is enough hydrogen re-fueling infrastructure and the cost of hydrogen fuel is more on par with the cost of diesel.
In the city bus segment, battery electric buses are currently the best solution for zero-emission since the duty cycles are shorter and the buses can typically be charged at their terminals when their shifts are complete.PSR
See additional information about Van Hool in the European Report in this publication.
Chris Fisher is Senior Commercial Vehicle Analyst at Power Systems Research
