The “Regionalverkehr Köln GmbH (RVK)”, today Germany’s bus operator with the most hydrogen buses, is currently testing a three-door fuel cell bus of the Portuguese manufacturer Caetano, model “H 2 City Gold”, with Toyota fuel cell equipment. RVK already operates 35 Van Hool hydrogen buses of the “A 330-CNG” model, plus 15 “Solaris Urbino 12 hydrogen” – no one in Europe currently operates more fuel cell buses.
The car with the registration number “K-UO 85” (registered to Toyota Germany in Cologne) has been loaned to RVK for a longer period of time to enable extensive tests. Since 10 January, RVK has been using it on behalf of the Bonn SWB on their express bus route “SB 60” (main station – Cologne/Bonn airport) via the A 59 motorway. The route length is just over 20 kilometres: the daily mileage of a bus on this line reaches more than 600 kilometres. If you don’t want to use diesel here, there is no other option than the hydrogen bus: battery-powered buses have not yet reached the point where they can travel more than 600 kilometres.
And if the range should ever be short: there is a hydrogen filling station at Cologne/Bonn Airport.
For the time being, the RVK demonstration vehicle will be used from the Meckenheim depot. It will run on the Meckenheim services – including the airport line operated on behalf of Bonn’s SWB – for three weeks. After that, it will change depots by moving to Wermelskirchen (Bergisch Gladbach district).
Where does the hydrogen come from?
To the comment ‘If you don’t want to use diesel here, there is no other option than the hydrogen bus.’ There another alternative to diesel buses and that is a trolleybus – or battery trolleybus if you want to avoid wiring the whole route.