Italy: Hydrogen Solaris buses to go to Venice

Venice: Solaris will deliver four Urbino 12 hydrogen buses to Venice. The contracts were concluded with Italian carriers AVM Venezia and ACTV SPA Venezia. The 12-metre hydrogen-fuelled buses will arrive in Italy in mid-2023, and the total value of the contracts exceeds €2.5m.

Solaris has landed another order for the delivery of zero-emission vehicles to Italy. The Urbino 12 hydrogen buses will serve the residents of Venice and its surroundings thanks to contracts signed with carriers AVM Venezia and ACTV SPA Venezia, which provide public transport services in Venice as well as within the communes of Venice and Chioggia. The deliveries are slated for the end of the second quarter of 2023, and the value of the contracts exceeds €2.5m.

The Urbino 12 hydrogen bus is a low-floor vehicle, generating no local emissions. At the heart of the bus lies a 70 kW hydrogen fuel cell that acts as a miniature hydrogen power plant aboard the vehicle. The sole by-products of the chemical reaction that takes place in the hydrogen fuel cell are heat and steam.

The fuel is stored in gaseous form, in state-of-the-art composite roof-mounted tanks. The tanks are rigorously tested, and have been designed to ensure maximum safety for the driver, passengers and pedestrians. This hydrogen-powered bus stands out due to their short refuelling time and their very long range, about 350 km, even in unfavourable weather conditions.

Travel comfort in these 12-metre hydrogen buses, with a 2-2-2 door arrangement, will be ensured, among other things, by air conditioning with a heat pump as well as USB ports for passengers located on the vehicle’s walls. The driver will also be supported by MobilEye Shield+. This is a modern system which alerts the driver every time an unexpected object is detected in the vicinity of the bus. The vehicles will also feature a passenger counting system. Continuous servicing of the vehicles will be provided by eSConnect, a bus fleet monitoring and management system designed by Solaris.

The Urbino 12 hydrogen units destined for Venice are yet another batch of vehicles producing no local emissions that will serve the residents of this region. In 2020, under a contract concluded with ACTV SPA Venezia, Solaris delivered 30 Urbino 12 electric vehicles to the city along with charging infrastructure. They have been deployed to exclusively provide public transport in two city districts located on the islands in the Venetian Lagoon: Lido and Pellestrina.

Hydrogen buses are an essential part of Solaris’s e-mobility offering and an attractive proposition for towns and cities that are striving to achieve zero-emission public transport systems. Solaris Urbino 12 hydrogen buses can be seen e.g. on the streets of Bolzano in Italy, Cologne and Wuppertal in Germany, as well as in the province of South Holland in the Netherlands and in the city of Konin in Poland. What is more, 12-metre hydrogen-powered Solaris buses will soon roll out onto the streets of Upper Bavaria, Palma de Mallorca, Vienna, Bratislava, Lublin and Poznań.