What better to experience this than on board the electric bus itself? So we took off in the eCitaro, running along Line 7 for a casual trip of around 17 kilometres and a travel time of just over an hour. Electric buses are now sent out on trips of up to 360 kilometres on suitable lines, and sometimes need to be recharged at midday in the depot.

Bus driver Andre Wolter (38) offers us a friendly and confident welcome on board his 18-metre-long eCitaro G at the central bus station. SV Lübeck decided to do without the optional two-axle drive, given that “the topography is pretty flat here”.

Back to daily life on board: you can see the effect of Andre Wolter’s 12 years of driving experience clearly in each perfectly timed motion of his hands and glance at the mirrors. Wolter: “like most of my colleagues, I am very enthusiastic about electric buses, particularly because of their handling properties and the recuperation-free coasting. At the start, many drivers were sceptical because of the initially reduced range, but their fears were soon put to bed,” he says, making a brief stop by Lübeck’s iconic Holstentor gate.

A newly retired couple praises the bus’s comfort and calm: “Get an electric car ourselves? Goodness, we’d rather travel by electric bus!” A pair of elderly ladies travel home after elevenses: “E-buses? It’s already a no-brainer for us,” they answer when asked about this particular drive.

Back at the depot we meet with Jens Lottmann. Lottmann is a trained automotive technician and HWK business economist; since 2015, he has been the head of the e-mobility programme at Stadtverkehr Lübeck. In his job, the public transport expert has retained a healthy dose of scepticism. “Earlier, we simply planned in buses by tank size; today we need to calculate in the exact range when planning tours.” To help with this, the new generation of the eCitaro with its innovative LMP-based solid-state battery has a guaranteed range of 200 kilometres regardless of the climatic conditions. “The first six buses with their first-generation lithium-ion batteries never quite managed our workload of 150 kilometres without limitations.”

Availability of electric buses is far beyond 90 percent, he says, and thus must be considered good. Nevertheless, the mothballing of diesel vehicles has been delayed, as they still cannot be replaced one-to-one. Over the long term, Lottmann is basing his calculations on a ratio of 1.25 to 1.5 e-buses to diesels. “But when I arrive here in the morning and every e-bus is on the road, I always say that it can’t be going that badly,” he says, happily. The control centre, manned by two employees round the clock, apparently needs a lot more attention these days: more vehicles and drivers have to be exchanged and longer range buffers must be included.

Our next stop: the bus hall with its charging infrastructure. “Operations can only be frictionless if the infrastructure and the workshop behind them are fully equipped and up to date. Here, we already have three charging islands with ten charging points each, built by Schaltbau; by the end of the year we will have 40 more for the additional vehicles to be delivered up to 2023,” explains Ole Hoffmann.

Hoffmann is responsible for charging infrastructure at Stadtverkehr Lübeck. By the end of 2023, around ten kilometres of high-voltage cabling weighing around ten tonnes will have been laid, serving a monthly demand from each bus of around ten megawatt-hours. At present, the transformer output is five megawatts; two 10,000-volt ring cables have been laid in the depot.

One special solution has been thought up by the electrical specialists in Lübeck: “to minimise charging losses in the devices to around five percent and use their waste heat efficiently, we have placed the ten chargers back to back and fitted them with a cooling duct which can either help warm the hall or extract heat as appropriate. This both benefits pre-climate-conditioning for the vehicles and keeps the LMP solid-state batteries at the temperature they feel ‘most comfortable’. With all this, we are only just beginning, however, and we still don’t have THE solution for every issue,” Hoffmann finishes.

Not just in the depot, but also in the workshop, new paths are being trodden. Here, a young woman is in charge, Milena Puzicha. She is the deputy head of the in-house bus workshop where most repair and maintenance works are carried out independently. For some electric bus systems, however, OMNIplus technicians need to be involved – the highly developed batteries being one example of this.

New in the two workshops are the roof workspaces, based on 3.50-metre-high aluminium frames with stairs going up to them. In the first hall, they are already complete – the remainder will be added bit by bit.

“In the meantime, we also offer training for future specialists in high-voltage and system technology,” explains Puzicha. She gained her foothold at the company via a “Girl’s Day” event and learnt her work from scratch starting in 2009. And she also drives buses herself. Many of the 30 or so employees of the workshop already have high-voltage training 1 and 2; the 3rd, live work, is intended for a core team. “Given time, every employee will be brought in, and over the medium term we want to create an independent electromobility department with its own teams and offices.”

Not only this: EvoBus sales and the OMNIplus service brand are also there to offer support and advice, as Thorsten Gallo, the EvoBus account manager, reports: “most high-voltage courses are offered directly by OMNIplus in Mannheim or Neu-Ulm, but can also take place here if the groups are larger in size. Collaboration with our BusWorld Home in Hamburg is also working very well and replacement parts supplies are organised directly from there. We are all growing together and are simply perfectly aligned.”

In this, Jens Lottmann points out, it is very important to book training capacity online in good time, as the demand is very high. But this is not a big problem for him, he says, as Lübeck is a pilot customer for many development topics relating to connectivity and OMNIplus ON. The digital OMNIplus ON Data Packages provide the minimum datasets from the buses required by the funding bodies; the new Uptime Pro provides predictive maintenance; and replacement parts are directly ordered via the COSware workshop system. “Now, we have reached a degree of maturity where practitioners have to work directly with the system every day,” Lottmann states.

And what’s the future for the great mediaeval city of Lübeck? Jens Lottmann is certain that electromobility will now move forward apace. He himself is very open to new technologies. “For example, what about hydrogen as an energy medium? I am sure that, in my career, I will be able to give this topic at least some impetus.” And indeed, the new eCitaro with Range Extender is already there to do just that!