The Times, 11 August 2016,
A “straddling bus” that gained worldwide interest when it was road-tested in China last week may be just a fantastic scam, its investors fear.
They have demanded their money back after criticism of the electric bus’s performance and the discovery that its main production base was still an empty field.
The bus, which was given a brief 300-metre test run in Qinhuangdao last week, glides on rails over traffic jams like a moving tunnel.
Song Youzhou, its inventor, says that a four-car train of electric Transit Elevated Buses (TEBs) could carry 1,200 passengers and travel at up to 37mph over other vehicles.
His company has admitted that the well-publicised trial in Qinhuangdao was an internal test and not a formal road test because the city had made no commitment to the project.
Critics say that the giant bus may turn poorly, prove too heavy for the road and risk constant collisions with unruly drivers who routinely cut into bicycle and emergency lanes to get ahead.
Chinese media discovered this week that despite reports that the futuristic buses would be introduced across the country next year the main TEB production base was just an empty field.
Some investors in TEB, which were promised annual returns of between 10 per cent and 20 per cent, have turned up at its office in the capital demanding their money back, the Beijing News reported.
Huaying Kailai, a company blacklisted for illegal finance activities last year, has sold investment packages in the buses that Chinese media suspect is an illegal peer-to-peer financing scheme. Elaborate scams remain all too common in China.
Mr Song, who said he expected global demand of about 500,000 TEBs, rejected the barrage of criticism. “We haven’t done anything wrong at all,” he told the Shanghai news website Sixth Tone. “The latest tests show that the bus design is entirely possible.”
Mr Song said that the design was best suited to six-lane roads in big cities, where the buses can occupy two lanes in both directions while higher vehicles use other lanes.