During the history of Mercedes-Benz and its mother company, Daimler, this company did many experiments which they seemed crazy or brilliant. One of the big failures for the company was in 1997, as they were working on Mercedes-Benz A-Class. It accorded at moose test by tipping over before entering the final straight section. But now, after 25 years, this company is again working on another crazy Idea. Just know, the electric Citaro bus is on the way.
Mercedes-Benz Citaro bus would have five big batteries to become electric. The weight for each one of the solid batteries is 500 kg and its going to be on the roof. That means Mercedes would mount .5 tones on the roof of the bus. This bus is tall enough now, later the eCitaro will be even taller.
Mabey it becomes a question, why not just put the batteries under the vehicle? the answer is that, eCitaro (or Citaro) should be easy to access for the whole people on their feet or on the wheelchairs. So, it’s important to keep the floor low.
So, the only places left to put the batteries is engine bay, or roof. Actually, they put some in the engine bay. Two units with the other paraphernalia that comes with EVs are there. The rest, are on the roof. We all know what the hazards would accouri if something happens to this tall bus, as the Mercedes-Benz engineers thought so. So, Mercedes used its trick on the bus, using active suspension that detects when the bus is about to tilt and works to keep it in a perfectly upright position. It becomes almost safe.
This new electric bus will have various configurations, with different types of batteries. This one you can see here, has 7 batteries (two inside engine bay, five on the roof). That brings the vehicle a capacity of 441 kWh. So, the top range is 300 km in ideal conditions and 170 kilometers in bad situations.
Making it clear that solid batteries have better range and also longevity, but on the other hand, low charging time speed. The maximum rate speed charger for the battery is 88kW. It takes ages to get fully charged, so using such a battery for personal cars, is not a good idea.
This commercial vehicle is already under the sale. Many municipalities in Europe are the customers. although, these electric buses will be weighed much more expensive that the diesel models.