Barcelona puts another 7 hydrogen buses into service

After Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) ordered eight fuel cell buses from the Portuguese manufacturer Caetano Bus in 2020, the remaining seven H2 buses will now make their debut in the TMB fleet.

In May and June, Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) will be flying the vehicles into service. Starting this month, four of them will supplement an H2 bus already in service on line X1, with three more to follow in June on the same line.

The tender for the fuel cell buses was launched in June 2020 followed by the delivery of the first hydrogen bus in September the same year. At that time it was also announced that TMB wants to build a plant for the production, storage and refuelling of hydrogen together with the Zona Franca Consortium (CZFB).

TMB now says that the hydrogen plant in the Zona Franca that Iberdola has been set up in less than a year with a grant from the Connecting Europe Facilities for Transport programme of the European Executive Agency for Climate, Infrastructure and the Environment (CINEA). This hydrogen plant, promoted through a TMB tender, will enable the creation of a green hydrogen hub that will enable other fleets and industries to adopt this vector as an energy solution. This falls under the goals of the European Hydrogen Strategy and the Full Hydrogen Roadmap of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic Recovery.

TMB says it has been collaborating with different entities and companies on the infrastructure for the hydrogen bus fleet. The project has been supported by the European JIVE 2 programme for the promotion of fuel cell and zero-emission vehicles co-financed by the European Union. JIVE has deployed 298 hydrogen vehicles and 20 hydrogen refuelling stations in 6 EU countries. TMB is the only Spanish operator participating in the project.

The Portuguese manufacturer Caetano Bus presented the H2.City Gold in October 2019. The vehicle uses the fuel cell technology of the Toyota Mirai. Combined with five hydrogen tanks that can store a total of 37.5 kilograms of H2, the buses should be able to travel up to 400 kilometres which is the value the manufacturer stated when presenting the model. According to the latest information from TMB, Caetano assumes a range of around 300 kilometres with daily consumption of 20 kilograms of hydrogen. According to the manufacturer, a refuelling process should take less than nine minutes at 350 bar.

TMB plans to integrate up to 60 hydrogen buses into its fleet by 2025. A few weeks ago, TMB also launched the tender process for the procurement of up to 83 additional battery-electric buses including charging infrastructure.

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