Blade Feng

Chinese manufacturer BYD made its first appearance at IMHX with an expansive range of warehouse trucks.

BYD is an industry leader in electric vehicles, and its display included the new BYD PTW20S pedestrian pallet truck and the second-generation PTP20S stand-on pallet truck.

BYD gained prominence a few years ago when its ECB18C three-wheel counterbalance forklift won the IFOY Award at CeMAT.

"The batteries utilised across the BYD range offer outstanding performance and reliability, amounting to industry-leading Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)," said Blade Feng, business director of BYD's European Forklifts. "When compared to equivalent equipment powered by traditional lead acid batteries, BYD iron-phosphate batteries require no maintenance, have a very short charge time, longer working life, and use up to 40% less energy. Furthermore, BYD's batteries can be opportunity-charged during short breaks in operations, thus guaranteeing maximum uptime at the lowest-possible cost."

Five years after it started, Feng said BYD is now entering the second stage of its European forklift business - looking to attract bigger fleet customers.

BYD is also planning to tackle the potentially huge electric truck market in Europe through its existing dealer network. "We have a lot of customers who are not just using forklifts and warehouse equipment: they are logistics companies and looking at electric truck solutions," he said, adding that the forklift sales team has been given additional responsibility for BYD's truck range. "So we will use most of the existing forklift dealer network to promote and service electric trucks."