South Korean bus maker Zyle Daewoo Bus Corp., a joint-venture with formerly Daewoo Motor and a Shanghai-based manufacturer, has reached a milestone of selling 3,000 electrically-powered buses in China during the 10 years it has been in the market.

Zyle Daewoo Bus said on Monday that Shanghai Wanxiang Daewoo Bus, a joint venture it set up with a local automaker in 2007 rolled out 2,488 electric buses as of the end of 2016. Additional 830 buses will be delivered to the Shanghai city government to make its total supplies exceed 3,000 units by the end of the year. Half of the electric buses in Shanghai would have been made from its factory.

Zyle Daewoo Bus started as Shinjin Industry, Korea’s first bus manufacturer, in 1955. It later was acquired by Daewoo Group and was resold to Korean hat maker YoungAn who also runs bus and forklift truck businesses in 2003 after the Korean conglomerate went under following the 1997 Asian financial crisis. At that time, Daewoo Group’s passenger car unit was taken over by U.S.-based General Motors Co. (GM) and commercial vehicle unit by Tata Daewoo Commercial Vehicle Co.

YoungAn renamed the bus unit to Zyle Daewoo Bus in 2013, and the company is currently headed by Baik Byeong-soo, son of YoungAn Chairman Baik Sung-hak.

The Korean bus company operates bus manufacturing plants in eight countries including Korea, China and Vietnam, and seeks to make forays into various overseas markets. It aims to sell 10,000 vehicles in 2020.



By Woo Je-yoon

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Source: Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea (May. 16, 2017)