BYD

--FILE--A BYD K9 electric bus travels on a road in Xi'an city, northwest China's Shaanxi province, 21 December 2014. BYD Co. won an order for as many as 60 electric buses from a U.S. mass-transit operator, the largest sale of its kind for the Chinese electric-vehicle maker. The order was approved Monday (27 April 2015) by the board of directors of the Long Beach Transit Authority, Sherry Li, a spokeswoman for BYD, said Monday. The transit authority, which serves portions of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, will order 10 battery-powered buses with options for its partner agencies to buy as many as 50 more, Li said. The electric-bus deal is the biggest in the international market so far for BYD, part-owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Li said. The company opened a bus factory in California a year ago to push into the U.S., Canadian and Latin American markets, and about 50 of its buses are now in operation in the U.S., according to BYD. The automaker is the world's largest producer of electric buses and has sold more than 5,000 of them globally, according to the company. BYD aims to sell about 15,000 electric cars to taxi fleets and about 6,000 electric buses this year, Hou Yan, the company's head of sales, told reporters at the Shanghai auto show last week.Photograph by Imaginechina/AP