Safra fuel cell buses coming to Auxerre

The city of Auxerre has commissioned the French manufacturer Safra to deliver five fuel cell buses by the end of this year. To be precise, these are hybrid buses that combine a 30-kW Symbio fuel cell system with a 30-kilo hydrogen tank and a 132-kWh battery pack.

The hydrogen-powered vehicle of type Businova has a range of more than 350km before it needs refuelling, according to Safra. The contract with Auxerre includes maintenance of the fleet, and a hydrogen filling station will be set up in town.

Safra relies on Symbio, the hydrogen’ specialist in Michelin group, for the hybrid drive system integrating a 30kW fuel cell module and a 132kWh battery pack as a so-called mid-power unit. This means that the bus carries less hydrogen than a ‘Full Power’ solution which uses a small battery and a large cell.

In Auxerre, the fuel cell buses will run on line 1 of the LEO transport network and will each cover around 200,000km per year, Safra highlights in a press release.

To deliver the models by the end of this year, Safra will ramp up its production as it claims to have a total of 22 models on order. Indeed it got six of these buses running already on the TADAO transport network in Artois-Gohelle as reported. More so, Safra points out it has contracts awarded by the municipal authorities in Versailles (BE GREEN), Le Mans (SETRAM) and Toulouse Airport (HYPORT), alongside several Businova Electric models on order.

sustainable-bus.com, businova.com (PI in French)