New electric buses from MAN, Mercedes and Ebusco
Munich’s municipal transport company MVG, a subsidiary of Stadtwerke München, has been using electric buses in the city for quite some time. And they are obviously satisfied with their electric buses, because now they have ordered 71 more. MAN will deliver 13 “MAN Lion’s City 12 E” 12-metre-buses, Mercedes 30 “eCitaro G” articulated buses and Ebusco 28 buses of its new “Ebusco 3.0-18” articulated model.
MVG expects a range of 300 kilometres for the solo cars and 250 kilometres for the articulated cars. This means that the solo cars can almost manage the average use of a bus throughout the day and into the night without recharging. (Note: the Bonn SWB gives an average daily performance of 330 kilometres for its buses). For its articulated buses, however, Ebusco assumes – as we will see below – a much higher range.
The delivery date
The new electric buses are to be delivered between spring 2024 and spring 2025, and MVG is spending almost 54 million euros on them all together. The additional costs compared to conventional diesel buses will be largely reimbursed by subsidies from the Federal Ministry of Transport and the State of Bavaria.
MVG boss Ingo Wortmann: “With these new vehicles now on order, we will have 132 electric buses in operation. They will bring us a big step closer to our goal of running only electrically powered buses in 2035.”
The Ebusco 3.0-18 – only recently on the market
The Ebusco 3.0-18 electric articulated bus is still very new on the market, so reason enough to take a closer look at the vehicles ordered for Munich.
They are to get extra-large batteries with a capacity of more than 500 kWh. Thanks to the lightweight composite construction characteristic of Ebusco’s 3.0 series, they are a considerable 5 tonnes lighter than the 18-metre-long Ebusco 2.2 articulated bus, which is still conventionally made of steel. Ebusco: “MVG can rely on low energy consumption and a long range. We expect an annual mileage per coach of around 60,000 kilometres, and our new articulated buses will not emit 55,000 kilograms of CO2 and 90,000 grams of nitrogen.
Ebusco has been well known on the streets of Munich since 2017. In addition to several Ebusco 2.2s already in operation at MVG, a first 12-metre-long prototype of the Ebusco 3.0 solo car has now been doing its rounds on line 100 in Munich’s city centre for a year and a half. In the process, it has consumed 30% less energy than its steel predecessor type 2.2 brothers. MVG CEO Ingo Wortmann praises the new Ebusco 3.0 for making a significant contribution to making Munich’s public transport even more sustainable.
The Ebusco 3.0-18 articulated e-bus has an unladen weight of only 14,500 kilograms. It can carry up to 150 passengers and, according to Ebusco, has a range of up to 700 kilometres thanks to its low dead weight. In normal operation, this is equivalent to running a bus for two days from early in the morning until late at night without having to recharge. The low weight of the wagon allows all axles to have only single tyres, so the wheel arches have to be correspondingly smaller, and the centre aisle can be correspondingly wider and thus more comfortable.
The batteries of the car work with the cell chemistry lithium iron phosphate (LiFePh). They are so flat that they could find their place under the low-floor floor. This gives the bus a very low centre of gravity, and this has a favourable effect on the driving behaviour and the comfort for the passengers.
Development partnership MVG – Ebusco
Ebusco boss Peter Bijvelds points to the close development partnership between Ebusco and Munich’s MVG. Not only do they work together on the further development of Ebusco’s product range. In the meantime, prototypes have also been developed to explore the extent to which buses can be electronically (not mechanically!) coupled together to form trains (“platooning”). This is all the more remarkable because Munich has 99 conventional bus trailers (with an exemption), but it is said that this form of operation (solo bus as towing vehicle and trailer) should not be further expanded in the future. The advantage of the new form of operation is obvious: at a certain stop, the electronically coupled bus train is disbanded by a simple push of a button, a driver gets into the rear, bsilang driverless car, and both buses continue their journey on now separate routes.
05.08.2023
