At the beginning of March, Duisburger Verkehrsgesellschaft AG (DVG) put its first eleven hydrogen-powered buses, which generate electricity in a ‘fuel cell’, into service. The buses are supplied by the Polish/Spanish bus manufacturer Solaris – following a corresponding invitation to tender – and are of the ‘Urbino 12 hydrogen’ type. They will be used on all routes served by twelve-metre-long solo buses.
Together with the city of Duisburg, DVG wants to offer future-proof and sustainable local public transport in the city. The eleven new hydrogen buses also serve this goal. They are emission-free and quiet, ensuring better air quality and less noise in the city. First of all, they offer their drivers good, ergonomically shaped seats at their workplace, as well as various assistance systems that not only make working behind the wheel easier, but above all safer. Passengers benefit from a comfortable and multifunctional interior design with a telephone system and generously dimensioned special utilisation areas. The new Solaris have two of these: one each on the left and right-hand side of the bus in the centre door area.
The new hydrogen Solaris were officially unveiled on 26 February 2025. The event was attended by North Rhine-Westphalia’s Transport Minister Oliver Krischer, Oliver Wittke, Chairman of the Board of Verkehrsverbund Rhein – Ruhr (VRR), and Duisburg’s Lord Mayor Sören Link. Minister Krischer: ‘We want to encourage more people to switch to buses and trains. This can be achieved with attractive local transport services, such as the climate-friendly hydrogen buses here. That’s why the state is also subsidising these new buses.’
Lord Mayor Link: ‘The new buses improve local transport in our city and ensure significantly fewer emissions. Thanks to the support of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, we are a big step closer to the transport revolution.’
Marcus Wittig, CEO of DVG, adds: ‘The fact that we are putting these eleven hydrogen buses and the hydrogen refuelling station into operation today is an important step towards completely emission-free local transport in our city.’
‘The new Solaris Urbino 12 hydrogen buses are characterised by a range of around 400 kilometres and short refuelling times. We can therefore use them as flexibly as any diesel bus throughout the entire network,’ says DVG Chief Technical Officer Andreas Gutschek.
The 11 Solaris hydrogen buses that have now been presented and put into operation will be followed by 14 ‘Solaris Urbino 18 hydrogen’ articulated hydrogen buses by the end of the year. However, the transport companies has to step back and away from the announced procurement of 100 hydrogen buses, as the Westdeutsche Alggemeine Zeitung reports: ‘Duisburger Verkehrsgesellschaft (DVG) does not want to procure any more hydrogen buses for the time being.’ This is mainly due to the changes in funding conditions at federal level, which make it basically impossible for a financially burdened municipality like Duisburg to make such investments on its own.
The fuel cells in the 12-metre buses have an output of 70 kW, those in the articulated buses 100 kW. The traction motors deliver an output of 160 kW (equivalent to 218 hp) in the solo buses and 240 kW (equivalent to 326 hp) in the articulated buses.
The fact that the new Solaris no longer have conventional rear-view mirrors, but instead have ‘mirror-eye cameras’, hardly needs mentioning these days. The advantage of the rear-view camera system is that the area covered by the cameras when looking behind is significantly larger than with mirrors as we have known them up to now. And in the dark, a modern camera can brighten the image – something a mirror cannot do. In other words: in the dark, the driver can see much better what is going on behind his bus.
The new hydrogen refuelling station at the DVG bus depot ‘Am Unkelkstein’ in Duisburg harbour (the largest inland port in the world) was supplied by the French company ‘Air Liquide’.
