Munich football stadium to install charging park

Both parties have announced that 30 charging points for electric buses and trucks are to be built in the southern bus car park of the Allianz Arena in a total of three construction phases. MAN and the football club are relying on an unspecified mix of CCS and MCS chargers. The duo are not giving a timetable for the individual construction phases and final completion, but emphasises that in future “up to 500 electric buses and trucks to be charged outside the Allianz Arena every day on non-matchdays.”

The project was officially launched this week in the presence of Bavaria’s Minister President Markus Söder, who is the patron of the project. The partners believe that the arena offers ideal conditions for the construction of a commercial vehicle charging park. After all, “Large football stadiums such as the Allianz Arena have a very powerful electricity grid due to their high electricity requirements for floodlights, catering operations and other consumers, which is only fully utilised on match days,” MAN wrote. In addition, the Allianz Arena is located directly at the busy Munich North motorway junction and has its own motorway access. According to MAN, up to 10,000 lorries pass this junction every day, which makes the location attractive for a charging park.

Munich’s football club FC Bayern will also need charging infrastructure for its own fleet in the future, as MAN will provide FC Bayern with its first all-electric coach as a team bus in the 2025/26 season. The background to the close relationship between the two sides is a sponsoring partnership that has existed since 2008 and which MAN has now extended until 2027. The use of the electric coach, the market launch of which the Munich-based manufacturer has announced for 2025, has raised eyebrows. However, MAN is talking about a test run. And it probably won’t actually be travelling long distances: in its own press release, the football club writes that ‘FC Bayern’s professionals are expected to travel to the Allianz Arena in an electric team bus from 2026 onwards, at least for home matches’. That sounds more like journeys in and around Munich than long-distance journeys.

Electric intercity buses and coaches are generally still rare. This is because, in contrast to city buses, which are already widely electrified, long-distance buses in particular are not just about TCO, as they do not travel on predictable routes and draw their electricity for the next day at night from their own charging station in the depot. Coaches need to be more flexible and require a correspondingly fast charging station at a wide variety of locations. Their use case is similar to that of long-distance electric lorries, which are only just reaching market maturity.

But back to the charging park: MAN and FCB have not yet specified which hardware supplier they will rely on for the charging infrastructure. However, fast-charging devices from manufacturer ABB can be seen on a digitally designed draft provided by the partners. Specifically, the Terra HP charging station. What is certain is that the record-breaking German football champions will make their stadium space available and only green electricity will be used at the charging stations in future.

MAN Transport Solutions, the bus and truck manufacturer’s consulting department specialising in eMobility solutions for customers, was and is deeply involved in the project. The experts have been advising on depot charging solutions and the like since 2018. “The charging park at the Allianz Arena will be a flagship project,” says Alexander Vlaskamp, CEO of MAN Truck & Bus, with conviction. “We will only achieve the Paris climate targets if we consistently decarbonise our vehicle fleets. Half of the trucks we produce each year should be electric by 2030. The charging infrastructure is the key to this. As a manufacturer, we are leading the way ourselves by setting up a public charging network in Europe at our service locations together with E.ON. But that alone is not enough. That’s why we are very grateful for fresh ideas and joint projects such as the one with FC Bayern.”

Jan-Christian Dreesen, CEO of FC Bayern, emphasises: “For us, the public charging hub for commercial vehicles is a continuation of our sustainability efforts to manage the Allianz Arena in an increasingly climate-friendly way. It is the next drive in a constantly evolving environmental programme that has been producing improvements for many years. Everyone wins with this project: FC Bayern, MAN, society and, most importantly, the environment.”

For MAN, the charging park at the Allianz Arena is a prestige project at home, but the network vehicle manufacturer’s commitment goes much further. In cooperation with E.On, MAN wants to set up fast chargers for electric trucks at 170 locations in Europe. The focus is on Germany, but not only there. The first site is due to go into operation this year, with 80 planned by the end of 2025.

With this initiative, the rollout of the commercial vehicle-compatible charging infrastructure is gaining further momentum. MAN – in the form of its parent company Traton – is already active in the area of fast-charging lorries together with Daimler Truck and the Volvo Group via the Milence joint venture. The target here is 1,700 charging points. The German government has also initiated an initial electric truck charging network: The contracts for the first network connections have been awarded and the tender for the construction and operation of the actual charging infrastructure is due to start in late summer.

The political goals for the decarbonisation of transport in Germany and Europe have been defined: The German government wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from heavy road freight transport in Germany by 55 per cent by 2030 and be climate-neutral by 2045. The EU recently agreed to reduce CO2 emissions from heavy goods vehicles by 65 per cent by 2035 and by 90 per cent by 2040 compared to 2019.

Update 28 October 2024

At the end of August, MAN and FC Bayern Munich announced that they would install 30 public charging points for electric trucks and buses in a bus car park at the Allianz Arena. The partners have now produced a social media clip in which FCB players Joshua Kimmich, Manuel Neuer and Konrad Laimer presented the megawatt charging park project at the Allianz Arena.

press.mantruckandbus.com, fcbayern.com, mantruckandbus.com (update)