InfraStructures - June/July 2012 - The First Fuel-Cell Buses with Hybrid Technology Go into Regular Service in Switzerland

The First Fuel-Cell Buses with Hybrid Technology
Go into Regular Service in Switzerland

PostAuto Schweiz AG has become the first company in Switzerland to deploy fuel-cell technology for public road transport. Since the end of 2011, five Mercedes-Benz Citaro FuelCELL Hybrid models have been serving on routes in and around Brugg as PostAuto vehicles. Over the next five years, PostAuto will test the fuel-cell drive, using clean hydrogen as fuel. The dense network of routes operated by PostAuto around Brugg is ideally suited to the test in terms of both topography and routing, with a mixture of city traffic, country roads and village streets.

The routes will be operated by the PostAuto company Voegtlin-Meyer AG, which will also service and refuel the five fuel-cell post vehicles at its garage location. Aargau Canton is supporting the fuel-cell bus project with a subsidy of CHF 1.5 million ($1.6 million) from the Swisslos lottery fund. PostAuto expects to save some 2,000 t of CO2 during the five-year test phase.
Improved fuel-cell components and the hybridization with lithium-ion batteries result in a reduction in hydrogen consumption of almost 50% for the new Citaro FuelCELL Hybrid compared with the previous generation.

The operating range of the fuel-cell bus is over 250 km. With these diverse technical advances, buses running on electric power alone with fuel cells as energy generators are now a major step closer to production maturity.

With more than 140,000 operating hours and a total distance travelled of over 2.2 million km, Mercedes-Benz buses have demonstrated the practical application of the eco-friendly fuel-cell drive.

Source: Daimler AG