Press releases

2020/10/23

SOLARIS HYDROGEN BUS TRIAL RUNS IN PARIS

In coming weeks, one of the most innovative vehicles from Solaris, the Urbino 12 hydrogen urban bus, will undergo trial runs in the streets of Paris. These trials, performed in cooperation with Solaris, will enable the French operator, RATP Group, to test the capacity of this technology applied to regular passenger revenue service.

At the UITP Global Public Transport Summit in 2019, officials from Solaris and the RATP Group (Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens) signed a leasing and testing contract for the Urbino 12 hydrogen bus model. These trial runs by RATP will extend for several weeks with the aim of testing the operating performance of the vehicle in regular passenger traffic in the southern quarters of Paris. As a matter of fact, the vehicle will be parked in a Thiais district depot, and will refuel at the Jouy station in Josas, south-east of the Capital.

“RATP Group is committed to the development of smart and sustainable cities, and is thus proud to cooperate with Solaris in the trial of their Urbino 12 hydrogen bus. Hydrogen will play a highly relevant role in the next few years. By taking up this challenge to test new energies, the Group retains a prominent position at the forefront of the energy transition”, said Marie-Claude Dupuis, General Vice-Manager of the RATP Group, responsible of strategy, innovation and development.

The Urbino 12 hydrogen bus is a cutting-edge technology vehicle based on a fuel cell package that generates 70 kW of electric power. The hydrogen fed to the fuel cells is converted to electricity to directly power the transmission chain of the vehicle which consists of a shaft driven by electric motors. Additionally, the bus is also equipped with a Solaris High Power battery as a supplementary energy storage system. Hydrogen is stored on the roof of the vehicle with heat and water being the only byproducts from the chemical reaction taking place in the fuel cells. Therefore, the vehicle does not emit any noxious substances while being on equal footing with conventional vehicles of this range thanks to its innovative technology.

Not for nothing has this Solaris vehicle raised such pointed interest from its arrival in June last year, which translated into orders from the Netherlands, Germany and Italy for a total of 57 buses, with the first vehicles being scheduled for delivery to the cities of Bolzano, Cologne and Wuppertal just late this year.

It is worth recalling that the RATP Group is the largest urban transport operator in France, providing daily services to millions of passengers in Paris and in the whole of the Île-de- France region. Moreover, it is important to stress that the French operator has made a decision to transform its whole fleet of 4700 buses into low emission vehicles by year 2025. To-date, its fleet includes a total of 19 Solaris Urbino 18 GNC buses, and a contract for the supply of the Solaris Urbino 8.9 LE electric bus is currently under way.