The overall objective of the envisaged project is to establish a production system for refurbishing and retrofitting the bodies of diesel-driven-buses after their service life. These bodies are usually still in a very good condition and have a high potential for being refurbished and retrofitted with electric powered drive systems. In Germany the public transport sector is about 39,600 buses strong (2013). Only 46.6% of these buses have EURO-IV and higher, 20.4% EURI-III, 23.5% EURO-II and 9.5% are much older. European wide (EU-27) there are about 8,200,000 buses and coaches. In Germany (39,600 of 79,200) around 50% of these are busses in public transport – around 400,000 buses. This shows the high potential of this market in the whole Europe.

Retrofitting is not only a sustainable way to use resources, but it is also economic ally feasible for the customer, because the body and many of the components are reused and have a remaining value about 100 – 200 T€.

Furthermore, the ecologic impact plays a more and more important role. First cities decided to close their inner cities up to 2020 for diesel-vehicles (for example Paris) or for vehicles with CO2-emissions (for example London) or Copenhagen as carbon neutral city up to 2025. We can be sure, that other regions and cities will follow. E-mobility is the key to success and needs further funding for development.

The objective of this project is to demonstrate, that rebuilding buses with electric powered drive systems will have a significant market in Europe and a large and sustainable benefit for the public transport sector:

• economic wise, because the operational costs are about 50% cheaper than diesel-driven buses (assembly, operation, maintenance)
• innovation wise, because these vehicles are equipped with several sensors that are connected to the internet to give more precise information
• ecological wise, because of CO2-emission-free operation.