Hamburg Hochbahn brings “E-Bus Masterplan” under way

Hamburg’s public transport provider Hochbahn is on schedule with its E-Bus Masterplan that will see them procure nothing but all-electric buses from 2020 onwards. The first batch of thirty such EVs will be delivered by Daimler’s EvoBus and Solaris after they won a competitive tender.

The two electric bus makers join Dutch infrastructure provider Heliox in getting the hanseatic port town to ride electrically. In detail, the Daimler subsidiary Citaro has received the order from Hamburg Hochbahn to deliver 20 E-Citaro electric buses while Solaris is to add another ten Urbino nE12.

Two electric buses from each busmaker are due to arrive this autumn with the rest 26 to follow until September 2019. Another order will be placed by mid-2019 a Hochbahn wants to replace 250 buses during the initial phase of their masterplan.

The electric buses due for delivery now can sit 25 passengers with another 45 standing and Hamburg Hochbahn says they have a range of about 150 kilometres. They run on power from Li-ion batteries with the EvoBus models boasting 243 kWh and Solaris 240 kWh.

The electric buses are not ready for opportunity charging but must get back to the depot instead. For now, there is only one depot equipped with such charging stations but Hochbahn and Heliox are working to get a dedicated electric bus depot running (we reported).

Hochbahn aims to electrify its entire fleet of 1,000 buses eventually and has formed a buying community with Berlin in 2016 that is open for other cities to join. The German capital too is switching to electric buses reportedly, urged to do so by the local government, the same happened in Hamburg. Berlin transport provider BVG is currently reviewing the bids after it closed the tender for 30 electric buses as well. Another tender is to be released shortly.

For the next batch of electric buses coming to Hamburg, Hochbahn expects a range of over 200 km and is currently testing other technologies.

welt.de (in German)