GM and Shanghai Automotive (SAIC) (earlier post) are partners in building diesel-hybrid buses for the Chinese market. GM made the announcement at the beginning on the Challenge Bibendum this week in Shanghai.

The joint hybrid bus program will use the GM-Allison diesel-hybrid powertrain (earlier post) packaged in a bus manufactured by Sunwin, SAIC’s bus joint venture in Shanghai.

GM and SAIC will jointly produce one hybrid bus for commercial evaluation in the primary stage of the program. The partners will then leverage real-world in-use data to study the feasibility of mass-producing the hybrid bus for Shanghai and China.

Depending upon operating conditions, the diesel-hybrid buses can reduce:

• Fuel consumption by as much as 60%

• CO₂ emissions by as much as 60%

• PM emissions by as much as 90%

• CO emissions by as much as 90%

• HC emissions by as much as 90%

• NO_x emissions by as much as 50%

There are currently about 17,000 buses in operation in Shanghai. Each runs an average of 155 miles (250 kilometers) per day. Just a 30% improvement in fuel economy could result in savings of 12 tons of fuel (about 90 million barrels) per vehicle per year.

At last count, GM has 335 buses with its diesel-hybrid platform running in North America.