Vdl Bus & Coach has been award with a 55 electric buses contract by Rotterdam public transport operator Ret. Vdl will also provide the charging infrastructures. Everything should be ready by the end of 2019. The buses will be charged over night at depot and during the service with rapid charging system. Also more that 100 hybrid buses will be ordered by Ret, as the general manager announced.
Netherlands has ambitious goal in terms of emobility. Vdl Bus & Coach is already involved in two big project: one in Eindhoven, where 43 electric articulated buses run for Hermes (Transdev group) and the other recently presented in Amsterdam, where 100 electric buses are in operation around Schipol airport. The operator is Connexxion, still a company belonging to Transdev group. The provinces, the central government and the transport autorithies in the Netherlands have already decided that diesel buses will no longer be purchased from 2025 on and that by 2030 all public transport buses will be electric. As reported on Dutch press, Ret, like other operators, will work in this direction step by step: 55 electric buses are going to arrive in 2019, 50 in 2021, 50 in 2024 and 110 in 2029.
Not only electric buses. Hybrids are coming
The tender for the first 55 electric buses has been awarded to Vdl Bus & Coach. They will go in operation by the end of 2019. The buses are planned to operate in Rotterdam, Schiedam and Vlaardingen. Maurice Unck, General Manager of Ret: “With this order, the sustainability of our bus fleet will become a step closer. We also intend to order the delivery of more than 100 hybrid buses this year. We are going to use the 55 fully electric buses for shorter city lines, and the hybrid buses for the regional lines». A roadmap driven also by the consideration that «Technology in the field of electric drives is developing rapidly. Because we always want to be able to use the latest technologies for electric buses, we will spread our investments within the concession period, so from 2019 to 2034».
