Mercedes-Benz: electric Citaro entering production next year; e-mobility consultancy service for transport operators
17 May 2017
At the Global Public Transport Summit (GPTS) in Montreal/Canada, the congress of the International Association of Public Transport, UITP, Mercedes-Benz again confirmed that battery-electric versions of its Citro bus (earlier post) would enter series production next year. prototypes are already undergoing testing on the roads.
The company said that the electrically powered Citaro will open up a new chapter in electric mobility, because Mercedes-Benz is not looking at the city bus in isolation, but as an integral part of a highly efficient transport system.
Daimler Buses therefore now offers a comprehensive consultancy service for transport operators, aimed at supporting them in the development of reliable e-mobility concepts viable for fleet use. To help customers achieve the right balance between the conflicting demands of range, charging infrastructure, payload and costs, experts from the recently established Mobility Solutions unit of Daimler Buses provide advice on their specific questions about e-mobility.
The systematic approach taken by this e-mobility consulting team, supported by intelligent data systems, ensures that each vehicle is optimally configured for the purposes intended and for the topography of a city or region where the bus will be used.
As part of the preparation for the efficient and reliable introduction of the forthcoming fully electrically powered Citaro, the experts undertake a detailed consultancy process that looks not just at the vehicle itself, but also at the charging infrastructure, energy supply, operating plans and IT requirements in the bus depots, as well as at suitable service concepts. The result is an individual plan with defined milestones that will allow the implementation of electric mobility in daily fleet operations in a way that minimises the operational as well as the economic risks.
For the multifaceted ecosystem that the introduction of the electric city bus necessitates, Daimler Buses is able to take advantage of the high level of expertise available within the Daimler Group in relation to such factors as charging infrastructure and stationary energy storage.
For operators of urban bus services in particular, storage units of this nature can be an important way of meeting the high energy requirements of their vehicles as economically as possible.
In early March, Daimler also announced that it would be investing in US charging station provider ChargePoint. With more than 33,000 charging spots, ChargePoint is the market leader in this area in the US and has significant expertise in relation to both hardware and software, from which Daimler Buses and its customers will also be able to benefit.
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