Foton Mobility boss, the ever indefatigable Neil Wang, was presenting a confident air at this year’s Sydney Bus Expo at Homebush with an array of both zero emission buses and coaches and a line up of diesel powered Cummins powered ICE buses in what was an impressive display.
Fresh from launching his new Chinese truck brand DFAC, or Donfeng as the brand is known in its homeland, which is the latest brand his operation is distributing, Wang is holding to his line that his company will become the number one commercial vehicle brand in Australia.
His bus operations are what made Wang successful here, first with Yutong which he drive hard to grab a good chunk of ready built coach and route sales. Having moved on from that brand Wang is now championing Foton electric light trucks along with DFAC ICE and BEV powered light trucks alongside Foton buses.
At the Sydney Bus Expo the Foton stand was chock a block with Foton buses both ICE and electric and Wang is determined that while they are currently coming mostly as fully built up buses and coaches, he is determined to open his own bus building operation at Nowra on the NSW South Coast, mostly in order to satisfy the state government’s desire to favour local input and manufacturing when public transport contacts are signed.
Wang was particularly keen on the 12 metre fully built-up Cummins diesel powered coach on the stand which he said offered operators a compelling choice.
“That bus is being offere with a price int eh $200,000s when most of its opponents are more than $300,000,” Wang told us.
“The reason we can do such a good price on the diesel coach is because it is coming in with Cummins power and because the Foton Cummins joint-venture factory is right next door with our bus factory in China,” he said.
That coach comes in fully built up, but Wang reckons it could also be brought in as a chassis and built up at his future Nowra factory.
“That’s the target, and as part of this we have also soft launched our carbon fibre city bus body, which by mid next year we hope to build the whole body in Australia and we can meet around 70 per cent local content,” he said..
Proudely on the Foton stand were also several examples of its battery electric city buses that were displayed in Transport for NSW livery and which are about to be put into service with Keolis Downer on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.
“So you’ve sold these to Keolis for the northern beaches and this is the first government order we have secured,” he explained
“The entire order is 126 in total so its pretty significant and in the future we will also build these up at our Nowra factory,” said Wang.
“Wang’s expectation is that the factory will be used to build up Foton’s carbon fibre high strength low weight bus body for these 12 metre city buses , which he says will deliver significant weight reductions and efficiency for rout bus operations in NSW.
“Carbon fibre is cutting-edge technology and no one else has this. We aim to build around 400 units a year from Nowra with the carbon fibre panels brought in from China,” he said.
“In the future these will be made in Australia from Australian-made carbon fibre, so we are real and we are pushing to use as much local content as possible.
“We now more than 50 per cent and some models we can do more than 60 per cent In the future, but we’re talking about 70 per cent,” Wang added.
Despite rumours that John King of Premier Motor Bus is involved witht he Nowra factory Wang was adamant that it is his business
” I own this 100 per cent, and Nowra is the perfect spot for our factory because it is close to Sydney, but not too close and it is very close to Port Kembla where our bus chassis are shipped to,” he said.
