Globally, Chinese manufacturers dominate electric bus exports, led by Yutong Bus and Xiamen King Long United Automotive Industry, and the trend is accelerating. In the first half of 2025 alone, China shipped about 9,000 fully electric buses worldwide, up 124%, year on year, compared with a 14% increase for the whole of 2024, according to news outlet China Auto M.S. Southeast Asian countries still make up a small portion of that figure, but growing demand across the region is likely to change that.
In Indonesia, BYD is partnering with VKTR Teknologi Mobilitas, partly owned by local conglomerate the Bakrie Group. In May, VKTR opened an electric bus and truck assembly plant in Magelang, Central Java, aiming to deliver 50 buses to Transjakarta by the end of December and 30 more in early 2026.
VKTR says parts for its buses are 40% locally sourced, becoming the first company in Indonesia to reach that milestone and rendering it eligible for EV incentives from the government.
VKTR President Gilarsi Wahyu Setijono said the assembly plant is currently underutilized, producing roughly 200 vehicles annually, compared with a capacity of 3,000 vehicles. But he is upbeat about the company's prospects.
"Our capacity will be nothing compared to the needs of Indonesia," Setijono told Nikkei Asia in an interview, citing President Prabowo Subianto's net-zero emissions pledge. He added, though, that the pace of adoption will depend on technical implementation of the policy which, if realized, will necessitate "maybe 10 more factories" like the Magelang plant.
Chinese electric buses are also plying the roads in other parts of Southeast Asia. In Malaysia, at least 146 electric buses were operational as of October, including 46 built by China's Foton Motor serving the Johor Bahru-Singapore route and 15 BYD buses deployed on the local bus rapid-transit network in the Klang Valley.
While the figure is still small, demand is expected to grow rapidly as Malaysia's shift toward greener public transport includes plans to deploy thousands of electric buses nationwide over the next five years.
Kim Long Motors is another Vietnamese bus maker, reportedly delivering 443 electric buses to Ho Chi Minh City this year. In addition to the buses it runs on its municipal network, the city introduced smaller electric buses to ferry people to the metro, which began operating in December 2024. Of the city's 2,350 buses, 26% are electric and 23% use compressed natural gas. All future bus purchases will be electric models, and the city hopes to have an all-electric fleet by 2030.
In Thailand, local EV maker Nex Point began making electric buses in 2020. The Thailand Board of Investment granted the company, listed on the country's stock exchange, an eight-year tax exemption. It now has a production capacity of 9,000 buses annually. But Thailand is not expected to see a sharp rise in demand for such buses over the next few years, with the government investing intensively in subways and above-ground trains, and encouraging people to use them.
Despite their otherwise good prospects in Southeast Asia, security concerns have been raised over Chinese electric buses after Norwegian public transport operator Ruter in early November said its fleet of several hundred Yutong buses could be remotely manipulated through autonomous software updates, prompting similar probes by Denmark and the U.K.
Yutong, the world's biggest bus manufacturer, based in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, rejected the claim, saying such manipulation is technically impossible because software updates are fully isolated from critical safety systems such as driving and braking.
In Southeast Asia, Singapore reportedly operates 20 Yutong electric buses. The company has a large presence in the Philippines, where roughly 3,300 of its buses are in use. Yutong buses are also occasionally seen in Indonesia. But it is not clear whether any of them are electric. Yutong entered both countries years ago, before the EV era.