Randy MacEwen
Analyst · Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead
Sure. And Rob, its’ Randy here. Just a reminder, there are kind of six key macro drivers that are really impacting the market there, the first is climate change, and this is particularly punctuated with China signing on to COP21, so the first time China embracing a global accord like this. The second is air quality. And of course last year the Beijing red alerts in December really punctuated this issue in China. The third is you’ve got growing urban populations and related to this is the fourth which is a growing need for mass urban transit. The fifth, you’ve got a situation in China where you’ve got heavy imports of oil that’s adversely impacting the trade balance. And so, there is a impetus for China to lower consumption of oil and address their trade balance issues. And then six, also important to China, they’re trying to transition of from a manufacturing economy to technology and innovation. All of these macro drivers, Rob, are informing government policy. And so, it’s got 13th 5-year plan, one of the key five elements there is really related to green the economy. You’ve got new energy vehicle regulations and incentive schemes and particularly fuel cell incentive subsidies. So, these are all driving market adoption there, and we’re seeing unprecedented activities, both from companies as well as from cities and provinces to position to address these six macro drivers in a way that’s helpful to their own economic development. So, that’s important context to understand, I think first of all. In terms of market adoption there, we are -- it’s still early of course and we’ve now deployed 24 fuel cell buses, 12 in Foshan and 12 in Yunfu. With those 12 buses in Foshan, we have a systems integrator there, we Re-Fire and the 12 in Yunfu have a different systems integrator HiTech. [Ph] So, we’ve -- us and our partners have kind of mitigated some risk there. It’s great to have two systems integrators that are now fairly relatively speaking experienced now integrating these. We’ve built at our own service team in China as well with service representing it from South to North in Foshan, Shanghai and Beijing and as well putting in place inventories, spare parts and preventative maintenance equipment. So, we’ve done the work necessary to help the deployment here of fuel cell buses in China.