Lessons from Electrification of Public Transport in Shenzhen, China – Joe Ma (#002)
Show Notes:
- Personal experience and Future plan [02:00]
- Lessons from the electrification process in Shenzhen [10:28]
- Processes to induct large fleet of electric buses [14:34]
- Role of technologies in the electrification process [18:30]
- Partnership with startups in Shenzhen [22:30]
- Energy management system [26:48]
- Pros & Cons of outsourcing charging infrastructure [29:27]
- Staff reskilling and relocation [32:37]
- Electric Vs. Hydrogen fuel cell buses [36:40]
- Future of mobility in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia [39:00]
- Startup ecosystem in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia [41:15]
- Lang Lang Music Bus in Shenzhen [44:15]
Complete Transcript:
Welcome to the mobility innovators podcast.
Hello, everyone. I’m so happy to welcome all listeners from all over the world to Mobility Innovator Podcast. I’m your host, Jaspal Singh. Mobility Innovator Podcast invites key innovators in the transportation and logistics industry to share their thought about the key changes in the sector about their work and what is their forecast for the future.
Today, I’ll be talking to one very special guest. He has been spreading knowledge about electric buses and electric taxis all over the world. For last seven years, he represented the city of Shenzhen, a city of 20 million people on various global platforms. Shenzhen is known as the capital of electric buses in the world with more than 15,000 buses and 18,000 electric taxis. He was a Deputy General Manager of Shenzhen Bus Group, a company, which is running 6,000 electric buses and 5,000 electric taxes. Man, this is huge.
A total number of transit buses in the whole of Canada is just 10,000. I’m so happy to welcome Joseph ma or you can call him Joe. He’s. Now the advisor to the CEO of Saudi Arabia Public Transport Company SAPTCO, and looking to replicate his success in the city of Riyadh.
It is now time to listen and learn.
Mr. Joseph Ma participated in this podcast in his personal capacity. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of Shenzhen Bus Group or Saudi Arabia Public Transport Company SAPTCO.
Hello, Joe, thank you so much for accepting our invitation. We are so fortunate to have you as our next guest.
Hello, Good morning. Good afternoon, Jaspal, where I come from, where I’m working now. Thank you for inviting me to come on the podcast. It’s a real honor.
It’s an honor for us. So to have you so today I’ll be, you know, spending time to learn more about you, your success in tri about your new role, and your perspective on the future of electric mobility. And to start with, I would like you to share a little more about yourself to our listener and any interesting fact about your career, which is not on your LinkedIn,
Right? This is a good one. Just, well what I haven’t put on my LinkedIn is that I was never a studious type. When I was a young boy, I was very mischievous, and I used to skip school a lot. And this is like back in Hong Kong in the, so like the late 60s or early 70s you know, I used to skip school a lot and I used to take public transport to all the sort like, you know, the beaches, the go and play football. And, you know, I would go from Hong Kong, where I used to live over the Hong Kong island. And in those days you had to take public transport because like, you know, being a young kid, I couldn’t drive.
And so I took buses, I took Fairies. I took, you know, go to from car side to Hong Kong and just to go to the beach and just, you know, skip school altogether. So that’s how I got to know the public transport system in Hong Kong. And I became so passionate about public transport system. And you know, now, even at my age, you know, I still take public transport everywhere where I can. Yeah.
So that’s not, that’s not, that’s not in my LinkedIn, but I, later on, I became, you know, a bit more responsible when you grow up, you become boring, you become more responsible. I started to work a bit harder, so yeah, that’s not in my LinkedIn.
Yeah, that’s true. Like, nobody will put skipping school on the LinkedIn, but like, I love what you said when you become more mature, we became more boring, and we start doing uninteresting stuff, but I think you are still doing a lot of interesting stuff. So you’re not boring. So you did your Bachelor and Master in Urban Design and City Planning from UK, and yes. After you had a successful career as a planner and consultant, why you transitioned to electric mobility sector in engine? I’m very surprised to see that move.
Well yeah, I mean, you’re right. I study urban planning. I study urban design, you know, in the UK. And then when I’ve also worked in different places, worked in London, Hong Kong, and China. And now here I am in Saudi Arabia and as an urban planner, I loved traveling to different places, and I love to work on planning and design of new towns and cities. And in the late 60s, late 80s and the 90s, I was back in Hong Kong. I was doing the old urban design projects. I was getting involved with the building of the new airport in the new international airport many, many new towns. And I always start with, you know, when I, when I do urban planning, when I, when I start with a PLA it’s like, you, you start from scratch, like a, like a blank campus.
And what do you do? I mean, I always start with the circulation system. I wouldn’t call it the road system, the circulation system, how people move around, how public transport move around, you know, where you, and in particular, in Hong Kong, they take public transport very seriously. And they always like, there’s a saying they use public transport particularly Metro system as a backbone for the city for movement in the city. But I always started with like, laying out all the circulations where, what MTR would go, the Metro system would go the road system linking into the Metro system and then house people circulate once you get on the Metro station. So I became very passionate about move mobility. So it’s not really public transportation, it’s more mobility, but it so happens that later on, I got involved with more and more kind of Metro system, the sort like root alignment studies TOD developments.
So I got more and more solid skewing away from the sort of the more main mainstream, urban design, urban planning, more into the solid mobility as a subject matter expert. So that’s how I started. And I did projects in did many exciting projects in in China working for the MTR. I did projects in Hong Kong, did projects in Shanghai, Wuhan, and a few other places. And I got gradually got into so like public transport and became a kind of so-called expert in public transport. And later on, I joined Sun Hong Kai, which is like the majority shareholder of KMB. And I got involved with buses and in 2015, I was sent over to work in Shenzhen Bus, by KMB who’s the majority shareholder of one of the majority shareholders of bus. And hence, I, you know, I was lucky to be at the right time, in the right place. Then, they were just starting with an electric mobility. So yeah, that’s here I am today.
Amazing. Such a long and interesting journey, I would say and it’s also people say that it’s like a soul searching for the right place. So you find your right place with public transit. We are so lucky to have you working on such an exciting projects. So you did amazing work in like you mentioned, you joined there in 2015, did amazing work were quite settle in your current assignment, and I’m very curious to know, why did you move to suddenly from a place of public transport to the place of car? Like, why did you move to Riyadh?
Well, again, I think it goes back to the question, what I talk about blank canvas, we all know about Saudi is being very you know, car driven kind of country. People like to drive the cars and, and stuff like that. And I think there is a lot of opportunity for public transport development in not just in Saudi Arabia, but in the whole of the MENA region as we’ve seen it in recent years. So there’s a lot of exciting stuff happening in the MENS region. And, you know, we’ve saw the reliance on in the old days. I mean, the traditional kind of economy is based on as very much an oil-based economy so of fossil fuel. And that, and I see that will come, you know, there be major change in the coming maybe decade or two, because like, you know, the COP26, everybody’s committed to sort of like the climate change, reducing sort of global warming.
And a lot of the mean countries have actually made commitments to the COP26, helping to reduce you know global warming effect of global warming and Saudi itself, you know, like they promised by 2030 that in Riyadh there’ll be 30% of vehicles on the street will be electric vehicles. And that goes along with, you know, the best thing to do is to change the public transport since the buses and there, so I see, you know, like the hold of Riyadh region including Saudi that there is a thrust towards, you know, promoting public transportation, as you can see in other cities around in the MENA region. So that’s why I’m here, you know, and I thought I’ve done well in a way I’ve done all I could in Shenzhen. And I like to, you know, meet the next challenges, which is where I am today.
That’s great. I really love started the blank canvas and build something from the scratch, and yeah, you did a great job earlier, and I’m very confident that Riyadh will achieve it target by 2030, which is good for the whole world.
Now, I want to ask something about the city where you were working earlier. So you always describe Shenzhen as the lab mice of electric buses, having taken its first hundred buses back in 2010 and converting the entire fleet by 2017 in total 16,000 electric buses and 22,000 electric taxi, such a huge number and Shenzhen was successful to electrify its entire fleet well before its deadline. I think the deadline was 2020, but they did it three years prior in 2017, there must be many learning lesson in the background. What would you do differently if you get an opportunity to start again? I don’t know whether you may want to start again or do it again or not.
Well, I think, as I said earlier, I was lucky to be in sun at the right time in the right place, you know, at the right time, in the right place in so 2015 I joined Shenzhen Bus and that was a time when government wanted to, I mean, both central government and Shenzhen Municipal Government wanted to push for, for electrification and you, right. They said a target, actually the tag was 2018 for us to do all the buses and 2020 for to do all the taxis, something like that. But we actually, we finished electrifying the whole, all the, all the buses by 2017 and the taxis by 2018. And yeah, I mean, Shenzhen bus, we would, I always say with the lap mice, but you know, Hey, the lap mice turned out.
And then and the joke goes in Shenzhen that if Shenzhen bus had bought into a company like BYD say in 2010 it wouldn’t just be a public transport company anymore. It would be, you know, one of the richest companies in the world. You could never have foresight having Foresight is boring anyway. So we did and so there was a lot of trial and error, and then we worked very closely worked very closely with BYD and there, we actually gave them a lot of feedback about how to improve the technologies, how to, because we, on a day to day basis, we’re actually driving on the road driving on the streets, you know, like taking on passengers. So a lot of mistakes were learn.
A lot of experience will learn. And so like that, but looking back, I wouldn’t say I would change everything. You know, if you ask me that, you know, having foresight this boring, so like it’s always, the world should be about learning from your mistakes. And, you know, if you know everything in advance that life will be too boring. But if, I mean, having said that if I was to say, go back and do it again, I would take the two main takeaways. I would suggest would be, first of all, don’t go for hybrid because in, at the early stage, we went for hybrid or rather Shenzhen bus went for hybrid. And then you ended up with two systems in the depot. And it’s like, you know, and most of the time you, we would, you would be driving with diesel anyway, because the electric part is just, you know, very rarely use.
So I would say that, you know, don’t go for hybrid. And then to begin with you start with maybe a small Depot or maybe one or two route, but have 100% electric buses on that particular route, or, but that particular Depot, because there’s a lot of data to be collected. There’s a lot of experience to be gained from running an electric fleet. And you want to be able to compare the difference between running a diesel fleet, an entirely a 100% diesel fleet, and one running a 100% electric fleet. Then you can compare the differences. You can collect a lot of data. Whereas if you have a mix fleet, it makes a comparison, a lot more kind of meaningless if you like.
Well, that’s interesting.
If you asked me looking back, would I do anything different? I, I probably wouldn’t do anything different because I wouldn’t have foresight to do that. If I was to do anything, then those were the two things I would suggest. Yes.
That that’s great. No, I love your quote about foresight is boring if you, if the future is so predictable, there is no fun. So it should be, there should be a factor of uncertainty. Absolutely.
You gave some good point about not including, not inducting hybrid buses and then going full fledge on one route or one Depot. So just following up a question would be many cities are just started to introduce electric buses, and many of them are still in a planning phase. So what would advise you would give to these cities like, what is the best process for inducting large fleet of electric buses? Like, you can do 5-10 buses, but what should be the process to induct large fleet of buses? What should they follow?
Well, I think there is a saying that horses for courses there’s no one solution that fits all. You can and then, I mean, Shenzhen experience is very different too. Maybe very different to others because like we in Shenzhen, we adopted for depot charging because the as you know, the daytime electricity price is five times out of the nighttime. So it was essential for bus to opt for the nighttime charging double charging. And so electricity price is something that you have to take into consideration the differentiation between daytime costs and the nighttime cost. And the actual operation itself, you know, whether you’re running long distance services or you’re running circular route, or running sort of like a shuttle roots first and last mile services. So we need to take in all different consideration.
There isn’t one, one size fit, all kind of solution. And I would say the most important thing is to another important thing factor you have to take into consideration would be the charging infrastructure. What kind of infrastructure do you have in the city? I mean, people can go for depot charging. There’s like opportunity charging. There’s like you know, different ways of charging trolley buses. So again, look at the operation itself and what kind of characteristics are required and your services that’s the most important thing and the other thing would be choosing the right size of vehicles. You don’t want different sizes, your vehicles, you don’t like, because all your depots, because it’s not like a petrol scenario. It’s not like a diesel scenario where you can just go anywhere, go into any filling station, you know, they can fill and, you know, fill a big bus or small bus.
Whereas if we’re going for depot charging, you need to look at your depot configuration. Look at all the, the parking spaces, look at the size of the parking spaces, the maneuvering of the buses in where, whether they, for instance, you want first bus in last bus out kind of concept. Yeah. The first bus to come in, go right to the depot, get charged and then in the morning is the last bus to leave, can be the last bus to leave the depot, or, you know, there a number of combinations. Some buses only need a top up you know, some buses need a longer charge. So these are all the factors you have to take into consideration when you’re thinking about your operation. So it’s not just about buying the buses, you’ve got to buy the right bus. You got to make sure that the interchangeability of different route you don’t want. So like one bus to different standards. So one bus, one particular bus cannot be charged in a different depot. So these are all the things I would say that are important to consider.
These are a great point. These are a great point. I agree with you first is the charging infrastructure. Second is the right size of the bus and planning your route well, and the operation. Well, a lot of cities are trying to bring buses without changing anything else in the operation, which is not a good recipe. They have to think from the operation side rather than from the side. So these are great point. Thanks for sharing. And I also want to ask you, how do you see technology really help Shenzhen Bus Group to manage and operate such a large fleet of electric buses? You had a big control center with 30 feet video wall. It was so impressive to see that do you think it’s imperative to have good technology infrastructure and what key technology the city must have before inducting the buses? Because many of the cities are, I can give example of some of the Indian city, which are jumping from diesel to electric, but they don’t have the good infrastructure technology infrastructure. So what do you think the technology infrastructure play role in in the operation of electric buses?
Well, the good thing about if you are converting your fleet in a wholesale manner in a large scale manner, the good thing about is you buying a batch of new buses, where there should be you know, the latest technologies, kind of the latest kind of fitting all the design and everything. And you do need to collect a lot of data. I mean, nowadays we are running a public transport company operation, it’s not just about running services. It’s about, you really need to adopt the latest technology to help you run the operation. There’s a lot of technologies, for instance, within a lot of telematics in electric buses plus a lot of information data that you need to look out for instance, I mean, the most essential, I would say the State of Charge SoC for each vehicle, you know, we want to make sure that your vehicle has enough charge.
And whenever there’s, you know, it’s running short of electricity, where should that bus get charged? So a lot of information is required for the data. And the thing is like nowadays all vehicles, not just, not just electric buses are fitted with a lot of data and computer, you know, like you know, information. So having a strong kind of monitoring system you know, not just for the vehicles, but for the whole operation, for the maintenance of the vehicles, for the safety of the vehicles, for the driving habits, because with electric buses, it’s really about depends on quite importantly, it also depends on how the driver drives it because, you know, some driver, they drive it hard and, and that saves electricity.
So having that kind of information, having access to every single vehicle is in my view, it’s quite essential. And that’s why you know, like, and on top of that, we’ve got all the other safety issues, like know watching the safety of the road system congestion you know, the anti-collision or everything is so important nowadays running an operation. So yeah, I would say, you know, if you are able to do a wholesale kind of like trans whatever transition from diesels, you must well invested that little bit more on the operating system, on solid the back of house system, where you can get a lot of data, you know, like, so doing predictive maintenance, doing it’s a lot of thing that you get that actually saves a lot management time. You know, that we, when install that a screen that you talked about we were holding sort like a daily, weekly meeting with all the solid, all the bus teams. So, and they didn’t need to come to the office or, you know, whereas before they would have to come to the office, and then with that system, we’re able to access to talk to directly to them on a weekly basis, or even on a daily basis, we can monitor, we can monitor the whole operation and then you can see what’s, you know, look out for congestion on particular part of the city during particular time. So I, in my view, that’s really worth investing into,
I agree with you with the data. Now you can collect with the electric buses, if you’re not using it, you can’t run your operation. Like you mentioned about State of Charge, the driver behavior. In fact, one of the study by BYD state that the driver behavior can impact up with 30% of the charging, you know, the range of the bus, which is great. I fully agree with you that, and also, I want to know, because Shenzhen is often referred as also the Silicon Valley of Hardware. It’s a city which has done amazing progress in last couple of decades, and it’s become one of the powerful and innovative ecosystem. Shenzhen Bus group was also working with some good startups.
How do you think those partnership helped the company? How do you think the startups play an important role in today’s world?
Well you know, Shenzhen is really a miracle in my view, you know, like when I was a kid you know, my father used to take me to the border between Hong Kong. And, and you looked over to Shenzehen in those days. I mean, I’m not talking about that long. Maybe this is in the early seventies.
You’re not that old.
The CBD now used to be just like 30 years ago, maybe just all party fields. I mean, in ancient history of 40 years, and like 40 years ago, talking about population of 30,000, you know, more than that, certainly more than that, maybe. And then that may be now the population of 20 million is a mega city. You know, like I don’t know how many MTR or Metro route they have now. I mean, when I, when I first went to the city went to work in the city, like, this is like doing work in the city, it was 15 years ago, maybe 15, there was only one Metro line, but now they’re like 10-20, you know, like coming up, not 2010 or 2015, something like that. And they’re building by the end of next year or the year after there is like talking about 1,000 kilometer of Metro lines.
So the it’s a very vibrant city and, you know, but it is also a very young city. The average, you know, like the average age of, of Shenzhen is 37 years old. I’m, well, way beyond that. And so it is always been the very dynamics of the, and I think 40 years ago when they decided that Shenzhen was going to be the first special economic zone and with this location being so next to just next to Hong Kong, it attracted a lot of, you know, like entrepreneur into the city, setting up kind of like a R&D research break basis. So nowadays you’ve got like, you know, major global companies. You’ve got Huawei, you got Tencent, you’ve got TGI. You’ve got, you know, by BYD and, and Shenzhen bus is always because Shenzhen bus is actually as old as the city itself.
And, you know, it grew up with all those companies. And some, a lot of those companies actually work hand in hand with Shenzhen Bus and they grew up together, like for example the case of BYD like, I would say it wasn’t for Shenzhen, BYD may not be as, as well known as well, establishes today. So very important that working with all these new, you know, the startups, and the new companies, and that, that is kind of the spirit of the city as well, is very innovative. It’s very, kind of like progressive, you know, always looking for the new, the next new thing, because there’s so many young people.
Well, that’s great. You already mentioned about BYD in 2010, if Shenzhen bus have just acquired some stake, it will be one of the wealthiest auto companies. Yes I agree. The city has grown with the startup, and it became a powerhouse now.
Now, I want to touch on the other side of electrification. You already mentioned some of these things earlier, so just want to go a little more in detail. You mentioned about the energy procurement and management, and I feel that energy procurement management play a very critical role in minimizing the energy cost of these electric vehicle. And you already mentioned in change, you got very good rate, like in the nighttime, the electricity charge was 1/5 of the daytime. This is a reason CBU for Depot charging. What are the other software and data analytics tool you were using to manage the charging infrastructure and energy costs? It’ll be useful for the cities, which are planning to induct electric buses, because many of the cities are not considering the energy cost right now because they feel it’s so cheap. We should not worry about, but I think it will be a major cost for electric buses in the future. So what kind of infrastructure you build at change past to manage these costs?
Well, in the early days it’s pretty much down to solve like the what do you call it? The managers of each, each what do you call them? The Depot manager, the fleet managers who would assess the bus route and then their requirement, and then which ones should come in to do the charges at what time. And then would that, that used to be done very much manually looking at, based on the experience of each, the fleet manager, how to do them. Whether should allocate the buses to come back try to avoid coming back at peak hours to do the charging and to come, you know, at least go for the medium price period, if there was a need for top up. So in the early days, much of that work would be done pretty much manually.
What I mean by manually is like, you know, they would do it with spreadsheets and whatever. But nowadays there isn’t, we rely very much on the charging service providers as well. Because like Rail, as, as I mentioned before in the early days, a lot of charging was subcontracted out to the charging service providers. So within the charges, they have smart charging, you know, how much it should top up and how much it should? What level they should cut off the electricity. So that would be fee fed in manually to each charger. But now, as I understand, they’re looking at some software with the charging, with a company, looking at charging in efficiency, looking how they can get the best kind of what you call the best the optimal mileage out of the charge and out of the bus. And they, they are looking into that. So I believe there’s something will be coming out very soon on this one. They’re looking at studies.
That’s great. And it’s so funny, the way technology has changed now, even we consider Excel and spreadsheet manually. There was a time when we say, we are using Excel and it’s computer software. And now we say Excel is manual. And, and I agree with that.
I’m still struggling with Excel.
Just follow up to the previous question, another innovative model in Shenzhen, which I is always very fan big fan of is outsource all charging infrastructure to third party and pay them on per kilometer basis. What are the key advantages and disadvantage of this model?
Well, in the early days I think when batteries technologies were still very much an unknown for a lot of people certainly for an operator election engine bus it was essential. I mean, the bus itself is easy, you know, the bus body, well, that’s easy, the doors, you know, it’s all the stuff, the air conditioning that’s easy enough. Whereas batteries were very much a new thing a new technology that came into market. And so what management decided to do in the early days was separate the batteries and the charging to a separate service provider a more professional kind of service providers. So in the early days, in the first batch buses in the early 2010, Shenzhen bus will purchase a bus body, and then the batteries and the battery monitoring system, and the charging service will be done by a separate company.
So until 2015, then they started to say, they would go for the whole bus, buy the whole bus, because by that time they learned, they had a lot more knowledge about their batteries itself, and the technical staff were able to sort of handle the handle a lot of that mechanical intellectual, not so much mechanical now, more electronic stuff.
So, but recently in 2020, actually BYD had set up their own infrastructure, charging infrastructure company, investment company, looking at investing into infrastructure charging infrastructure, looking at providing, servicing for electric vehicles. So that in a way, because they actually accumulate 10 years of experience that they felt that they were able to handle the whole thing by themselves, you know, the cost and the charging, the batteries and maintenance of electric vehicles. I mean, it is and the reason why they did in the early days, because the batteries wasn’t was an unknown to them.
No, it’s a complete transition now and more and more expertise, you get inhouse and there is a scope to grow.
That’s right.
That’s great. I’m very curious to know about the next point, which I want to discuss with you is about the manpower and the human resource the transition to electrification. It’s actually a process. It’s not a one step and it’s require a lot of organizational transformation, approved change management, including staff relocation, reskilling, route planning, infrastructure upgrading. So there are a lot of process and steps involved. And I remember that Shenzhen Bus did not retrench any staff. And in fact, they reskill around 619 employees to become electro mechanical technician, if I’m right. Yeah. How important do you think is staff reskilling and, and what mistake the other trans agencies do?
Well, I mentioned earlier that SBG is a joint venture between the Shenzhen Municipal Government and, KMB from Hong Kong. And it’s a partly state-run organization is kind of a, like partly stay home organization. The social responsibility, the social commitment was always on the top of the list of priorities that the company had to look for. And so retraining staff is, you know, retraining staff is one of the very important to keep the staff, the, you know, the sort like meant keep, keep the morale going. So it, it made a very conscious decision that it, it, you know, it didn’t throughout the whole transition process. It wasn’t going to lay off any staff. And therefore, a lot of staff were being retrained and look for like, as you said, you know, like looking for maintenance.
I mean, even this happened even before that, because in the old days we used to have conductor and conductors selling tickets on the bus. And then when solid, the smart, you know, the smart payment came along, you know, like a lot of the conductors and conductors were being retrained to become drivers. So it always said the traditional of not laying off staff trying or trying not to lay off staff anyway. And so really the retraining of staff looking after the welfare’s always going to be the top of the list of priorities you know, like that’s why we had in really like good morale within the staff force. And I mean, for company, I mean maybe, because you say, people say, it’s because your operations subsidized.
So it’s okay for you to do that. So I can understand from other companies and operators are, you know, particularly the commercially run operators, this may not be easy, but having said that, I think in running a public transport company, when running any company, you need to think beyond, you know, outside the box, you need to look at new business ventures. I mean, you’ve got good staff. You should always, you can always retrain them to do something, something else. I mean, maybe having said that maybe not so much, not so much a professional staff, because they spent a long time doing, going through the whole education loop and they don’t want to, you know, do something, you know, say, for example, from a, well, I mean, from a doctor to, to become a, to become an engineer, that’s difficult, but, you know, even for ourselves, you know, like we come from general background, even you talking about, I came from a background of being an urban planner, urban design, and I went to salt pocket transportation because there’s a lot of skills that can be to yeah.
You know, to other industries. I mean, having said that, as I said, you know, if different, if you’re a doctor or surgeon, you can’t turn from a surgeon to become a lawyer. So yeah. I mean, there are a lot of common skills that can be applied. And the thing is to how do you retrain the people, how you sort motivate people. That’s what I think is important.
That I fully agree with you. There are new business model emerging within the public transport automation and automation can use these as an opportunity to reskill and retain their staff, and actually happy employees lead to happy customer, not other way around, you know? Absolutely. So that’s important. And, and on the funny side I would never want to go to a doctor who was lawyer earlier and, and doctor that’s,
That’s a tough combination. That’s a tough combination.
That’s a tough combination now, you know, I want to come back to your earlier point. Foresight is boring. But I want to ask you a feature question electric or fuel cell, which technology will win the race. Last year. I remember you mentioned that hydrogen fuel cell is expensive and will take five to 10 years to fully commercialize. Do you still believe that, or you are now more bullish about hydrogen fuel cell vehicle?
I think, recently, there’s been a lot of talk about hydrogen, right? But in general, it’s still very much more expensive, competitive electric. And now that electric has come leaps and bounds in the last five years, you know, technologies become cheaper. The batteries have becoming cheaper. The technologies have become, be becoming better. The range of the buses are going further and further. So I, I still think that I still hold my whole view of, you know, hydrogen will be another five to 10 years. I mean, really good that we are looking at the hydrogen I’m not trying to knock it, but it, it is still a lot more expensive than, battery electric. And you know, like recently I read in the article, the city of Monte, they just they were supposed to get something like 50 vehicles or between 2023 and 2025. And then they did the economics and thought, you know, the calculation and thought that was too expensive and the digital idea. So I think it’s the cost is still very much an issue that we, we, I would say that there’s holding, holding back the development hydrogen, but having said that, I mean, again, if the government willing to pay for the subsidies, then that’s a different that’s that, you know, that can be a completely different dialogue.
I agree. I also read about that news, that city is moving now from hybrid back to electric because they feel it’s, doesn’t make any economic sense to do that. And, and now I want to, you know, come back to your earlier point about why you moved to Riyadh.
You left such a big impression with your work in Shenzhen I think it’ll be very difficult for people to realize that you are not anymore working with Shenzhen Bus. So now let me, let me ask you about your new role. Many people may not know that Riyadh is making huge investment in public transit, both Metro and buses. You already mentioned that SAPTCO, which is the company are now working as managing buses, Metro, in school transport, in the country, and, and SAPTCO is also investing digital services like autonomous vehicle on demand, mobility journey planer, and all. Yeah. Did the CEO already give you a long list of tasks to complete and finish? What’s your goal in the Riyadh?
Well, I think first of all, I think you’re overrating me a bit. Just, well, I don’t think there’s anybody that cannot be replaced. I mean, as I said, I was lucky to be at the right time, in the right place and had a great team of people working with me. And I missed them very all very much. And, you know, like I really had a good time working in Shenzhen enjoy the time very much. But it’s not just down to me, it’s down to the whole, everybody behind me as for what’s happening in Saudi Arabia. I think it’s a very exciting place. I mean, as I said at the beginning, the whole MENA region next 10-20 years, there’s a lot of exciting things happening because the need to wean itself of, you know, of dependence on the oil industry.
So there are many exciting projects, some of which you’ve already named, you know, like the electrification Metro system, autonomous driving, smart mobility, MaaS, Light rail everything. So a lot of new things happening. I’m actually, wow. I’m sure I’ve got a long list for myself. I don’t know what the CEO think about me but I hope he thinks I’ll be helpful. You know, I think, yeah, I mean, I’m really quite happy to be hopefully at the right place right time again. And so repeat that excellent time that I had in, in Shenzhen and you know, as I said, there’s a lot of exciting things happening here and, and mean is going to be a, you a region that we all, everybody we are looking at very important.
Yeah. I agree MENA and Africa, whole these two continents are growing very fast and implementing new public transport infrastructure projects and all. And also it’s interesting is that Riyadh is also emerging as a startup destination. In many reasons, a lot of new startups are coming from Riyadh now. How do you see the startup will play an important role in the transformation of transit system in Riyadh how, what kind of support they can provide?
Well, yeah, I mean, you’re right. I mean, MENA region, like you got so many different styles up from different sectors in whether in lifestyle, food, fashion, shopping, everything. Mobility is just one of them. And a lot of new entrepreneurs coming into this city, investing into all these new startups. And I think, I mean, looking, comparing that with Shenzhen again, Shenzhen a very young city, very forward looking, and, you know, a lot of them, a lot of people I met a lot of really successful people I met in City, were in the mid-thirties, early-forties or something like that. And it’s wonderful to see young people coming in with fresh idea, new ideas, you know, raring to go and, you know, contributing to all different sectors.
And I think public transportation again, is mobility. I caught mobility and we caught just public transportation. Yeah. Such an important sector. And it’s good to see. And I really, I really admire young people wanting to be taking part in all these new startups. I mean, there’s a Chinese thing that, you know, for important elements in your life you, the clothes on your back and the roof over your head and food on the table. And the last one, and one of the most important one is mobility able to move around. So mobility setup, I think they should go hand in hand and more young people getting in the industry, getting involved, giving their ideas. And then I think nowadays certainly in lot of cities and a lot of countries, young people, they don’t like their own cars anymore. They want to use public transportation.
They want to share mobility. I think that the share economy, I mean, for the last few years, we’ve been affected by COVID. So the share economy kind of being affected quite significantly, but in the long term, I think we’re looking at sort like the whole, the being sustainable share, share the share economy is still very much important and share economy is, you know, like it’s always related to new startups, you know, like how do you share using smart mobile or smart system. I think all that rely is really relying on, on young people coming into different sectors of the industries different industries and different sectors. So, yeah, I mean, I think this startup is a great thing and I mean, I’ve been involved with one or two of your startup kind of events. I think I’m always very supportive of new startups. And I think that’s, it’s important to encourage that.
Yeah, you rightly mentioned the bringing the fresh perspective and these young people can always bring the new idea on the table which sometime we miss it. So we are kind of at the end of our this conversation. You know this, I would say talk I’m very curious to know your background picture, you know, are you in a theater? Are you in a bus? What does it look like? What is it all?
This is actually a bus. The background is actually a bus. This is one of the buses. One of the buses, we did in Shenzhen bus this is a joint collaboration with the very famous pianist, the world with non-PS. And this is an doubled decker electric bus. And Shenzhen Bus turned that into a music bus. This is actually where I’m sitting now behind is, should be a piano, like on the top, on the top deck of the bus. And then the alarm would come on the bus and do kind of like musical tours. And then also encourage young people to come on the bus take public transportation, take sightseeing and learn about music at the same time. So this was actually very successful in changing. And I think, you know, public transportation need not be boring, may not be full of dull studies like myself, you know, young and dynamic. It should be fun. It should be part of the whole your lifestyle, you know, kind of thing. So yeah, I mean, this is the reason for, I really like this background, so I use it quite a lot.
Yeah. All right. I love it. You know, the seats look so remarkable and, and actually it’s a new phrase of MaaS Music as a Service. So you are actually, providing music while on the move. No, that’s great. So now, you know, the fun part of our talk. Now it’s a rapid-fire question round, and I’ll ask you five questions and you need to answer it quickly. Just say whatever comes to your mind, and quick answer.. So if you’re ready then, then I’ll fire my first question to you.
Yeah. Sure.
Great. So first question, if you were not in mobility sector, what other profession you would’ve selected?
Well, I always like football, but I’m too small.
Jaspal Singh [46:23]:
Big enough. You know, I love that because Muhammad the last time he was on the podcast and he also a big fan of football. So you can form a team with him and now, you know, you are a global trotter itself, you know, you travel so much around the world.
In fact, you work in different continents. So, which is your favorite city in the world?
Hong Kong and London.
Ah, there is some bias about Hong Kong, but I, I accept it because I love Hong Kong too. I love Hong Kong too.
So third question is and I don’t know, can you answer it without any biases, which city has the best transit network in the world?
Again, Hong Kong and London, and maybe the future we are maybe in the future it is Riyadh.
And, and again, one question which is a difficult one for you to find out who’s your favorite leader in the mobility sector?
The leaders in my view are the frontline staff. I think they’re the most important people. They’re leading the industry. I remember a time when I was a one time I was in Manchester, I was taking a bus. It was a Christmas day and the driver was getting everybody to sing Christmas song. And I thought that was so wonderful. I mean, here we are on the Christmas day, everybody’s, you know, having their day off and he was driving a bus. I mean, that to me is a hero and he was still very happy and everybody’s like, everybody got on the bus, all let’s sing this and sing that. And he was singing Christmas song all the way through. So in my view, I always put the front line stop as the leaders for the industry.
That’s great. That’s a really, really great answer. I mean, I never thought about it and I fully agreed, you know, they are the one, even during this pandemic, they were the one who were putting their life and driving the bus all around and, and they were helping the other frontline staff. A lot of nurses, doctors were using the public transit.
Yeah. Actually talking about that. Right? The pandemic, one of my colleagues at Shenzhen Bus and every day he was for the last two years, every day, he was shutting people from the border between Hong Kong and to the quarantine place. And seven days a week, you know, 24X7. And then, because he was working in, so-called kind of like sensitive because like, you know, taking, carrying people from the border to the quarantine place. So he couldn’t go home. He hasn’t been, he hadn’t been home for two years.
Two years.
He needed to be on shift on he needed to get to work. And then he couldn’t just take self isolation. So, he’s not been home for two years. He’s been staying at the staff quarter. And every morning he would go from the staff quarter to the border, pick up staff, pick up passengers, dropping down them off to quarantine place, and then he would have rest. And then weekend, he was, he couldn’t go home on the weekend because, you know, he needed to for self-isolation. So to me, I mean the frontline staff. They actually they are the backbone to the industry in my view. And they should be, you know, I see them as leader of end of the industry.
No, that’s great. That’s such a remarkable story. Really heads off to these people, you know, putting their life at risk. Now, last question if you can change one thing in life, what would it be?
I wouldn’t change nothing
You would
Change. Well, I made mistakes. I mean, I wouldn’t change a thing.
That’s great. And, I love that answer because some people try to look back and try to feel like, oh, I should change this. And I should change that, but they forget that this is the foundation where they are today. So changing thing will not make future anything different. So it’s just always look forward. That’s great.
Thank you so much, Joe, for your great insight. I really enjoyed this chat and I really loved your answers and giving perspective, your knowledge. I learned a lot from your experience as always, and I hope people who listen to this podcast, they will learn a lot. So thank you so much. And I wish you all the success in your new assignment.
Thank you. Jaspal. It’s been really enjoyable and real wonder for me to share my experience.
Thank you for listening this podcast, we’ll be inviting some other inspiring guests in coming weeks. You can subscribe us online, get the notification. If you have any feedback or suggestion for this podcast, please do write to us at info@mobility-innovators.com. We look forward to see you next time. Thank you.
Guest: Joe Ma, Technical Advisor to CEO, Saudi Arabia Public Transport Company (SAPTCO)
Cities around the world are investing in electric buses and planning to induct electric buses to achieve their climate goals. The city of Shenzhen, a 20-million-strong metropolis, is known as the global capital of electric buses. The first 100 electric buses were introduced in 2010, and the entire fleet was converted to electric in 2017, totaling 16,000 electric buses and 22,000 electric taxis. The electrification of public transportation in Shenzhen has yielded numerous lessons.
Joseph (Joe) Ma is Technical Advisor to CEO of Saudi Arabia Public Transport Company (SAPTCO). Previously, he was working as Deputy General Manager/ Financial Controller in Shenzhen Bus Group, in charge of international development, procurement, finance, and advertisement. A major accomplishment since joining Shenzhen Bus is the successful procurement of some 6,000 electric buses and 4,700 electric taxis resulting in Shenzhen Bus Group becoming the first fully and largest electric-powered public transportation operator in the world. Joseph Ma is an urban planner with over 30 years of international experience. He is an Eminent Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, a Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute, a registered Professional Planner (Hong Kong), and a Member of the Hong Kong Institute of Architectural Conservationists.
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