Amsterdam’s growing e-bus fleet will charge smarter

Amsterdam’s public transit operator GVB is extending smart charging technology across its depots in the Dutch capital. Using technology by The Mobility House, GVB will charge its growing e-bus fleet increasingly intelligently before the year’s end.

In concrete terms, GVB targets intelligent charging over 159 electric buses at 190 DC charge points equipped with the ChargePilot by The Mobility House. The e-bus fleet comprises vehicles by VDL, as reported.

GVB has already relied on the technology at Amsterdam Central charging hub since 2022. Now the cooperation will extend to another six depots throughout the city.

The Mobility House estimates that the Dutch transport company could save up to 100,000 in network and energy costs annually. ChargePilot coordinates local utility rates with bus schedules and routes to optimise energy use and cost.

The German company will implement ChargePilot gradually and embedded in the existing urban mobility ecosystem. The implementation is the next step towards an all-electric bus fleet in the Dutch capital and pays into the provider’s goal of zero emissions with its buses by 2025. In doing so, the GVB is following the requirements of the city of Amsterdam in the course of the ‘Clean Air Action Plan’ and further regulations set by the city and the network operator for the charging processes.

Specifically, the charging and energy management system from The Mobility House will communicate with GVB’s existing planning tools: “The interface (VDV 463) to the depot management system from PSI Transcom and to the HASTUS software solution from GIRO enables the systems to exchange important data for the smooth operation of the electric buses. This includes, for example, the battery level at the time of arrival, the desired state of charge at the destination and the need for preconditioning per VDV 261 and ISO 15118. Using this information, the coupled systems can control and monitor the individual charging processes and ensure that each bus is reliably ready for use at the start of service,” The Mobility House explains.

TMH are proud that the project at Amsterdam Central Station has convinced the GVB also to use ChargePilot in the rest of the city and to charge their electric buses intelligently, expresses Jan Winkler, Senior Business Development Manager at The Mobility House. “We are looking forward to further expanding our successful cooperation, bringing many more services of our software to bear, such as optimising charging performance based on current electricity prices.”

The ChargePilot platform is available internationally. In the US, The Mobility House is working with the New York State Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to deploy its smart charging and energy management solution ChargePilot for New York City Transit (NYCT), the largest public bus fleet operator in the US last November.

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