Articulated buses

It’s early March and bitterly cold. There is a yellow, low-floor articulated bus on the extensive car park of the Carezza mountain hotel in the South Tyrolean Alps. Here, at an altitude of 1,750 metres above sea level, the regular-service bus seems out of place.

The articulated bus is one of four prototypes of the eCitaro fuel cell. The first electric bus from Mercedes-Benz in which a fuel cell system extends the range is on a trial run through the Alps.

The test lasting several days begins with crossing the Alps from Neu-Ulm via Füssen, the Fern pass and the Reschen pass to Bolzano. The combination of four battery packs with 98 kWh each and 30 kilograms of hydrogen on board was expected to be more than sufficient for the 350 kilometre route. Nevertheless, it is difficult to estimate the energy consumption in advance on the long steep passes at temperatures around freezing. The team therefore decided not to take any risk and, as a precaution, to recharge the batteries to a SoC (State of Charge) of 93.5 percent at Allgäuer Tor service station.

https://www.mercedes-benz-bus.com/int/en/news-and-stories/test-drive-across-the-alps.html#carousel-93e605d02d-item-4eb07a5b96-tabpanel