Introduction of Battery Electric Buses in European Cities – Economic Comparison of Novel Technological Concepts

Nowadays, the conversion of diesel fueled public bus fleets into those powered by electricity is one of the most important tasks for public transport operators. In the frame of European Commission funded projects (“Eliptic” [Commission, 2015], “ZeEUS” [Commission, 2014]), there are at the moment several demonstrations in different European (big) cities. Besides purely demonstrating the general technical functionality, finding Business Cases is also a crucial task, since the operation with the new technology should be at least not significantly more expensive than compared to Diesel, besides having clear societal and environmental benefits.
Within this context, the presented work focuses on the detailed comparison of two novel technological concepts of electric buses which are currently demonstrated in several European cities in the frame of the “Eliptic”-project:
1) Opportunity-charging of battery electric buses taking energy from local DC tram grid
2) Trolley-Hybrid buses (Buses being fed by overhead catenary and being able to cover parts of their routes by on-board batteries)
The investigations are based on already existing and potential future electric bus network and real operation in different cities and are performed in direct cooperation with the respective public transport operators to obtain meaningful results. A technical, economic and ecological presentation and comparison of the different approaches is the main target of the work.
For this purpose, detailed analyses are performed in order to calculate the Total-Cost of Ownership (TCO). This comprises all relevant technical investment- and running costs over a certain period under consideration. Sine it is representing an important cost-factor of the new system, the battery is particularly considered regarding the expected lifetime in different operation scenarios.