Charged up and ready to go!

May 21, 2024

It’s one thing to purchase an electric bus; it’s another thing entirely to charge it. In Germany, this problem was recently solved by making the electric bus depot the bus supplier’s responsibility.

The bus operator to which we’re eluding is ESWE Verkehrsgesellschaft (ESWE), the company responsible for public transport in Wiesbaden, Germany. The supplier in question is Daimler Buses, which has delivered a turnkey, electrified depot for ESWE. Daimler has also supplied a total of 120 battery-electric eCitaro buses since the start of the project in 2019.

ESWE operates more than 290 buses on 43 lines, carrying around 60 million passengers a year. It employs over 1,100 people, two-thirds of whom work in the transport services. The majority of the company’s fleet is made up of Mercedes-Benz buses. With the introduction of the eCitaro, ESWE has implemented an ambitious plan, converting more than a third of its bus fleet to fully electric vehicles within only a few years.

The experts from Daimler Buses Solutions, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Daimler Buses, set up the entire e-infrastructure required to operate the electric bus fleet. Acting as a general contractor, Daimler supervised all construction work and installed a total of 120 charging stations.

Recently, Andreas Kowol, head of building and transport for the city of Wiesbaden and chairman of the Supervisory Board of ESWE; Marion Hebding, the company’s managing director; and Till Oberwörder, CEO of Daimler Buses, celebrated the finalisation of the project along with other company representatives.

Oberwörder says the order from ESWE was not only special for the company in terms of volume; it also laid the foundation for Daimler Buses Solutions and was therefore of strategic importance. “The transport company ESWE needed a complete solution, meaning both vehicles and charging facilities. With our experience and knowledge, we were able to support our customer and electrify the depot in Wiesbaden,” he explains. “There is a clear demand for turnkey solutions and our new subsidiary is currently electrifying more than 20 depots throughout Europe. In this way, we are actively driving the transformation of our industry forward, working together with our customers.”

E-buses and turnkey e-system from a single provider

ESWE from Wiesbaden was the first customer to order a complete package – consisting of e-buses and a ready-to-use electrified system – from Daimler Buses. Since the contract was signed in April 2019, Daimler Buses has gradually delivered 120 eCitaro buses to the operator. At the same time, the wholly-owned subsidiary Daimler Buses Solutions converted the entire depot during ongoing transport operations, acting as the general contractor.

To achieve this, Daimler planned three individual construction phases and implemented them one after the other in collaboration with more than 20 partners. The scope of the project included, for example, implementing all necessary underground engineering measures and installing the electrical infrastructure. Amongst other things, the experts from the Daimler Buses subsidiary took over an electrical substation for converting the current from medium to low voltage, and routed all cables from the network operator’s transfer point on the premises. Charge management formed a further component of the project. Daimler converted all the operator’s software to make it suitable for running an e-bus fleet and created a dedicated operating concept.

Furthermore, as the general contractor, Daimler Buses will continue to secure and support the operation and availability of the installed system over the next 12 years.