Rhein Neckar Verkehr To Be 1st Electric Mercedes-Benz Citaro Bus Buyer

The first buyer for the all-electric Mercedes-Benz Citaro city bus will be Rhein‑Neckar‑Verkehr GmbH — with the purchased buses slated to go into service in the Rhein-Neckar metropolitan region as part of the customer trialling process, following delivery at the end of 2018.

To cement the deal, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) has been signed by representatives of the Daimler subsidiary EvoBus GmbH and Rhein‑Neckar‑Verkehr GmbH. As part of the deal, the new partners will be exchanging relevant findings following the beginning of regular trial service of the buses.

The all-electric Mercedes-Benz Citaro, for those unfamiliar with it, was designed to be easily customized to suit the needs of different customers — particularly regarding range, battery-pack capacity, and charging speeds.

“One of the particular features of the Citaro with all‑electric drive will be the precise refined thermal management of the bus’s drive and climate control systems. This thermal management reduces energy consumption significantly. As a result the range without changing the size of battery will be extended,” Green Car Congress writes.

“The Citaro with all‑electric drive is currently being put through the same comprehensive cycle of trials and testing to which every other bus built by Mercedes‑Benz is subjected. Prototypes have, for example, already successfully run through initial winter testing in icy temperatures at the Arctic circle as well as summer testing in the heat of Spain’s Sierra Nevada.”

What follows now are endurance testing and the continuing refinement of the design. After that, presumably, the electric bus will be ready for a wide-scale rollout of the new buses.