TOKYO, Nov. 10, 2023—It’s been a while since my last post, so I’m going go easy but offer critiques to Japanese government/civilian administration policies. Today’s subject is about incongruity of the 2025 Osaka Expo that touts to trumpet Japanese science and technology, when the reality is its near-schizophrenia by contracting to use China’s BYD EV buses as the event’s core transit.
The show, which is bound to be a big, expensive yawn, is scheduled to open in April 2025 in the western Japanese hub city. It’s already is looking doomed and whether can open as the city’s administrators, and more so, bureaucrats of the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry and other government offices, envision. (This week, the government of Mexico informally told the Expo secretariat that it was pulling out of the event for sky-high construction costs.)
In June 2023, EV Motors Japan of Kita-kyushu City, a 2019 startup, announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to deliver approximately 100 BYD electric buses to Osaka Metro Co., which is owned fully by the City of Osaka, the main arbiter of the Expo. EV Motors Japan effectively seems to be a service company for Chinese EV vehicles and other varieties of equipment, though its website claims R&D activities.
The contract is believed to be the largest of its kind for electric buses. EV Motors Japan and BYD held a rolling-off ceremony for the buses at BYD plant in China in October, according to Japanese media reports.
In Japan, about 100 electric buses are cruising on the road, most of them of BYD as Japanese bus and truck manufacturers had yet to catch up – probably not in time for the 2025 Expo. BYD electric buses began showing up on Japanese roads in 2015.
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