September 2004

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More buses: The BVG public transport authority in Germany’s capital Berlin plans to launch a couple of fuel cell powered double-decker buses some time next year. The buses are to be built by Sweden’s Volvo, and the fuel cells will be contributed by Proton Motor, a fuel cell developer and builder in Starnberg, in southern Germany, which previously has shown some avant-garde bus designs (H&FCL June 00). The information source is the web service “Fuel Cell Works” which in turn cites the website of the German broadcasting service “Deutsche Welle” and the Aug. 18 issue of a Berlin daily, “Berliner Zeitung.” The story quotes Burkhard Eberwein, BVG’s bus technology manager, as saying the new buses will be bigger than Berlin’s traditional “Big Yellow” doubledeckers, carrying 120-130 passengers compared to 95 for the existing ones, and they will be almost five feet longer than the current 44.3 feet models. According to the report, a previous effort to launch a fuel cell bus in Berlin failed: the Italian-made fuel cells that were to be used in the bus built by German bus- and truckmaker MAN were unable to generate power at a steady rate, the paper quoted Eberwein as saying. Currently, some 450 doubledeckers are still cruising Berlin streets, less than half of the 1,000 that used to be in service a decade ago.