Chapter 470 - 216: Have a Good New Year

Chapter 470: Chapter 216: Have a Good New Year

January 31, 2027.

The Little New Year, according to the southern Chinese lunar calendar.

The management of the Shanmei Bus Company had just returned from a meeting with the city, and every one of them wore a gloomy expression.

"Chairman He, what do we do now?"

Chairman He Jingguang looked helpless. "What can I do? My hands are tied!"

General Manager Zhang Huade also looked defeated. "There’s no more money for subsidies, and the bus routes are losing money. It’s a dead end!"

"Didn’t the city’s revenue increase by over two billion this year? How can there be no money?" another manager asked, completely baffled.

He Jingguang blurted out his frustrations. "Heh, what about the holes from the past few years? Do the civil servants not need to be paid? Which is more important, hospitals and schools, or the bus company?"

"Old He, watch what you say," General Manager Zhang Huade quickly reminded him.

"Heh..." He Jingguang seemed to have given up all hope.

However, what the two of them didn’t know was that the city officials were also having a massive headache over the bus company’s situation. They had already held several meetings to discuss what to do with it. After all, the Shanmei Bus Company had over two hundred full-time employees, and including temporary workers, the total was around 600 people.

Paying so many employees their salaries before the New Year was a problem, but not an insurmountable one. The emergence of the Hailufeng Company had, after all, brought significant relief to the local government’s finances.

The real issue was the company’s future operations.

If they couldn’t solve the long-term operational problems, then even if they provided a subsidy this year, the company would continue to lose money next year. No one could tolerate annual losses like that.

What’s more, the city had recently reviewed the bus company’s application to replace its bus batteries. Of the city’s 1,295 new-energy buses, more than half needed new batteries. The replacement cost for each bus was between 400,000 and 600,000 yuan.

This brought the total replacement cost to 325 million yuan.

In a few years, the batteries for the remaining buses would also need to be replaced, requiring another three to four hundred million yuan.

Clearly, this was a situation the city found unbearable.

After all, there hadn’t been any major breakthroughs in battery technology yet, especially for buses. Their batteries generally had a lifespan of only five to eight years.

This was a fatal flaw. The first batch of electric buses had already reached the end of their battery life. From now on, about a third of the electric bus batteries would need replacing every two to three years, resulting in annual battery replacement costs of over a hundred million yuan.

Over the years, the rise of ride-hailing apps, rentable electric bikes, and bike-sharing services, combined with an aging population for whom bus rides were free, had all contributed to the bus system’s declining revenue, while its expenses had barely decreased.

As a result, the bus system was doomed to lose money year after year.

But now the bus company was in an impossible situation. Their current misery was as great as their initial joy when they first introduced the electric buses.

It was too late to switch back to diesel buses now; the cost would be far beyond what they could afford.

But replacing the batteries meant getting fleeced every year.

They were trapped, damned if they did and damned if they didn’t.

It was at this point that someone in the city government thought of the Hailufeng Company. They sent a representative to visit Jiang Miao to see if they could attract an investment from his company to alleviate the bus company’s financial pressure.

Jiang Miao had just come from Shuya’s lab when he heard the news.

「In the office.」

Li Zixuan was pouring him tea while his business secretary, Liu Deming, gave a detailed report on the situation. This included the Shanmei Bus Company’s operational status and the difficulty of replacing the batteries—details the city couldn’t hide, and in truth, had no way of hiding.

Jiang Haibo, standing to the side, frowned. "Boss, this bus company is a bottomless pit. Even though it only uses 53 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, the battery replacement costs are over a hundred million. In ’26, the bus company’s revenue was only 71 million yuan, while employee salaries and benefits alone cost seventy to eighty million. They’re losing at least 120 million yuan a year."

Jiang Miao took a sip of tea. "Deming, give me the details of the bus company’s operations."

"Yes, Boss." Liu Deming opened a file. "The bus company currently operates 1,295 electric buses. Most of them, 1,000 to be exact, are BYD K7s. Of the remaining 295, 150 are Fuzun electric buses, and the rest are smaller, van-type minibuses."

Jiang Miao closed his eyes, listening intently.

"Due to slow charging speeds and deteriorating battery performance, the bus company uses a ’swap the bus, not the driver’ model. When a bus is low on power, the driver simply switches to another one. Factoring in vehicles under repair or decommissioned, the actual number of buses operating on the city’s roads at any given time is only around 350 to 400."

Liu Deming continued, "The company currently operates 108 routes. On average, that’s about three to four buses running on each route at any given time."

"So, more than half the electric buses are on standby?"

"That’s right." Liu Deming nodded.

Jiang Miao shook his head. "No wonder their operations are in such bad shape. Look up the battery capacity for the K7 and the Fuzun models."

Liu Deming flipped through his documents and looked up. "Both models use lithium iron phosphate batteries. The K7 has a capacity of 114 kWh—it’s the lowest-spec version. The Fuzun 8.2 has a capacity of around 120 kWh. Both models are advertised with a range of about 240 kilometers."

"A range of 240 kilometers? That’s 0.47 kWh per kilometer?" Jiang Miao scoffed.

’Buses don’t drive long distances; they’re constantly stopping and starting,’ he thought. ’The energy consumption is definitely no less than 0.8 kWh per kilometer. Factoring in annual battery degradation, they could probably only go about 140 kilometers when new. After seven or eight years of use, a full charge likely only gets them sixty or seventy kilometers.’