MAN Truck & Bus starts series production of the all-electric Lion’s City E
At the beginning of October 2020, MAN's plant in Starachowice, Poland, started production of battery-powered city buses with the first customer vehicle coming off the assembly line in the shape the 12 metre Lion’s City E, and with a comprehensive trial and testing programme completed, the MAN electric bus is ready for series production.
With an maximum estimated range of 270km, The Lion’s City E models will be heading off to the Hamburg-Holstein public transportation company (VHH) in Germany and it is planned that an articulated version of the all-electric Lion’s City E will follow approximately six months later, and should go into series production in the first half of 2021.
The first two MAN e-buses were handed over for everyday use in Hamburg at the end of 2019, and since then the MAN E Bus demo fleet has been cruising around the streets of Europe – negotiating extensive field trials in scheduled service operation and spending time with numerous customers in countries such as Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. One of these orders has come from Malmö in Sweden: Nobina Sverige AB, Scandinavia’s largest bus operator, has placed an order for 22 MAN Lion’s City E buses.
In terms of the production process, these electric buses will be fully integrated into the existing city bus production setup at the plant in Starachowice with the 12 metre solo version being manufactured during the initial series production launch and the electric articulated bus Lion’s City 18 Entering production around six months later.
“I am delighted that we are now able to supply the innovative and multi-award-winning Lion’s City E as a series-produced vehicle. The start of series production is an important milestone on the e-mobility roadmap for MAN Truck & Bus and for the site in Starachowice. In doing so, we are expanding our production portfolio and taking another strategic step towards sustainable mobility,” says Michael Kobriger, Executive Board Member for Production & Logistics at MAN Truck & Bus and Board Mentor for the Business Unit Bus. “Over the last few years, the company has been preparing the bus production setup and its employees for the challenges of e-mobility with the utmost care."
As part of the production preparation process in Starachowice, new systems had to be purchased or existing ones upgraded, processes had to be re-engineered and around 3,500 employees had to go through extensive training. For MAN, this is the first major delivery to a customer off the back of a tender process, and points towards the shape of things to come for one of Europe's biggest automotive names.