South coast town to become electric bus and truck manufacturing hub

The New South Wales state government has announced the creation of a new manufacturing hub for electric buses and electric trucks on the South Coast.

The new facility, to be built in Nowra, a city of more than 22,000, from late 2025, will produce electric buses, electric trucks, and hydrogen fuel cell engines.

According to a statement from NSW Premier Chris Minns and state Minister for Transport Jo Haylen, the facility, to be built by Australian manufacturer Foton Mobility Distribution, will employ around 100 local workers.

The NSW government’s contract with Foton is one of the first orders made through its Zero Emission Buses (ZEB) program, which is also in the process of converting eleven existing bus depots in Greater Sydney to battery electric, building a new battery electric depot at Macquarie Park, and acquiring around 1200 new electric buses by 2028.

Minns’ government took the announcement as an opportunity to hit out at their predecessors, the Liberal National Coalition that held power in the state from 2011 to 2023.

Minns accused them of “offshoring” public transport manufacturing, in what he said amounted to a “complete disaster” for New South Wales workers.

“Workers across NSW are great at building public transport like these buses, and under our government they’re building them here again,” Minns said.

NSW Minister for Transport Jo Haylen said this new facility was the first step in a new industry for the state.

“There will be many more orders to come for Sydney, Outer Metropolitan and Regional NSW and many good quality, skilled manufacturing jobs that will be created thanks to the Minns Labor Government’s support for building our buses, trains and ferries right here in Australia,” she said.

“Not only is it a great location because we have space, and we have young people that want to stay in this part of the world with skilled quality jobs, build their families, work hard and have a future here in the beautiful South Coast, but also because we’re surrounded by universities, by TAFE, by innovation and new technology,” she added.

NSW’s Minister for Domestic Manufacturing Courtney Houssos also hit out at the previous state government.

“The previous government sent contracts like this offshore, costing NSW thousands of jobs and billions of dollars,” she said.

“By leveraging the power of government contracts like this, we can rebuild local industries, support local workers and grow the NSW economy, particularly in regional communities.”

Foton Mobility Distribution is an Australian-owned distributor with strong business ties to Foton Motor, a Chinese commercial vehicle manufacturer.

The company’s vehicles include the Hydrogen Fuel Cell City Bus, powered by a Toyota-made hydrogen fuel cell, the Foton Electric City Bus, which can charge in 90 minutes (with access to the right charger), the T5 battery electric truck, and the battery electric concrete mixer truck.

In 2023, the ACT government ordered 90 Chinese-made Yutong ‘E12’ buses for Transport Canberra, which has the stated aim of electrifying its entire bus fleet by 2040, though the government pulled four of its electric buses out of operation this month over technical issues.

In November last year, Yutong partnered with Australia’s Vehicle Dealers International (VDI) to build its E12s at a facility in Brisbane, including the 90 units ordered by the ACT government.

Meanwhile, in September last year, Western Australia’s first locally-made electric bus began taking passengers in the Perth CBD.

The new announcement will hopefully prove a boon to the budding electric bus sector in Australia which, as reported by The Driven two years ago, has been criticised for slow uptake.

As well as contributing to the state’s emissions reduction targets, the electrification of transport could have major benefits for public health.

A 2023 study from the University of Melbourne found vehicle emissions may cause over 11,000 premature deaths a year in Australia. Those numbers were reached by scaling recent research on vehicle-emission impacts in New Zealand, the HAPINZ 3.0 study, to the Australian population.