With the handover of ten Mercedes‑Benz electric buses on last Wednesday, the share of electric buses in the fleet of the mobility service provider HEAG mobilo will increase to around 65 percent. This means that electric buses from Mercedes‑Benz are now used on all lines in the operating area. The vehicles were handed over by Rüdiger Kappel, Head of Sales Public Transport Germany at Daimler Buses, and Jascha Lackner, Support and Coordination of Subsidies for Sustainable Mobility and Energy Supply at NOW GmbH, to HEAG mobilo Managing Directors Johannes Gregor and Arne Rath with the symbolic presentation of a key at the Böllenfalltor depot.

The new eCitaro is equipped with the NMC3 battery generation. This means that the eCitaro G, with its seven installed battery packs, achieves a total capacity of 686 kWh and a range of around 220 kilometres. The vehicles are charged in the depot via plugs. The charging sockets are located on the right and left near the front axle.

The electric drive aside, HEAG mobilo attaches particular importance to safety and equipment. In addition to a reversing camera, a large driver protection window and Active Preventive Brake Assist, all vehicles are also equipped with Sideguard Assist, a turning assistant that supports the driver in critical turning situations. In addition, the interior of the eCitaro is fully video monitored with six cameras.

The equipment is completed by two special-purpose areas with wheelchair support surfaces and integrated mother/child seats, as well as double USB charging ports distributed in the side walls and two ultra-wide displays in 29-inch 32:9 format for the Infotainment range.

Like all buses from Daimler Buses, the new eCitaro from HEAG mobilo are equipped as standard with the Bus Data Center as an interface to the digital services from OMNIplus. The Darmstadt-based company uses the OMNIplus ON Uptime pro service, for example, to improve the availability of the fleet. Fault messages and important diagnostic information are transmitted to the workshop in real time to reduce service times. The OMNIplus services ON monitor Time Management, with which the mandatory driver card and mass memory downloads can be carried out remotely and time-saving, and ON monitor consumption analysis for evaluating and optimizing energy consumption, are also in use at HEAG mobilo.