Electric Solaris conquers Romania

Solaris Bus & Coach S.A. has just signed another contract for the supply of Urbino 12 electric buses to the Romanian city of Cluj Napoca. This time the city has ordered 18 eco-friendly vehicles. It is an extension of the framework agreement of August last year. Having ordered 41 buses in total, Cluj Napoca will become the city with the highest number of Solaris Urbino electrics in Europe.

The Solaris Urbino 12 electric buses commissioned by city authorities crown a framework agreement for the delivery of 41 zero-emission vehicles in total. Even though the agreement stipulated deliveries over the next three years, the city decided to have orders completed in slightly more than a year after all. The first 11 electric Solaris buses where delivered to the customer in spring this year. Another 12 buses will make it to Cluj Napoca by the end of 2018. The last batch with 18 freshly ordered vehicles is to leave Bolechowo nine months after contract signing.

The bus purchase was partly financed by the Swiss-Romanian Cooperation Programme. CTP Transport Company has been named operator. The contract is worth nearly PLN 90 million. The execution of the latest commission will make Cluj Napoca the biggest customer of Solaris in terms of orders for environmentally friendly electric buses. The biggest one-off deliveries of Urbino electric buses yet went to Cracow and Jaworzno (26 and 23 vehicles, respectively). CTP Cluj Napoca will also become the operator with the largest fleet of Solaris vehicles in all of Romania.

The 12-metre Urbino electric for the Romanian carrier painted in a distinctive white and purple will be equipped with a 160 kW central engine and traction batteries of the Solaris High Energy type with a capacity of 200 kWh. Adding electric buses to the operator's fleet meant for the city investments in charging facilities, too. Eleven slow-charging and three fast-charging stations using pantographs (each bus is fitted with a pantograph mounted on the bus roof above the second axle) have been set up in the city in the past year.

The buses for Cluj-Napoca feature, among others, air-conditioning in the passenger compartment as well as a complete monitoring system on the outside and inside of the vehicle. Passengers will certainly appreciate the possibility of using free WiFi access and USB ports thanks to which they will recharge their smartphones while riding on the bus. The buses can carry up to 78 passengers, including 27 sitting on seats of which 10 are accessible from the low floor.

The past weeks have been extremely productive for Solaris on the Romanian market. The firm has signed a framework contract for the supply of up to 50 articulated trolleybuses of the Trollino 18 model. These will be the first trolleybuses of the Polish producer in Cluj-Napoca. Adding up all of the delivered and ordered vehicles (the first ones were produced 15 years ago), there will be nearly 300 buses with the green dachshund logo driving around Romanian cities.

Solaris Bus & Coach S.A. is among Europe’s leaders in e-mobility. In barely seven years since the première of its first electric bus business the firm has supplied or secured orders for over 330 such vehicles from customers in fourteen countries. The crowning achievement of the firm in electromobility was the Solaris Urbino 12 electric winning the most prestigious award in the bus industry - the “Bus of the Year 2017” – title which went to a Polish producer for the first time and, also for the first time in history, was granted to an electric bus. In 2017, Solaris was ranked leading business in Europe in the electric bus segment, claiming a market share of over 18%.