The first hydrogen bus is coming to Athens’ urban transport

His Foti Fotinos

A few months ago, the first electric buses, albeit in a pilot stage, made their appearance on the streets of Athens.

In a few months, probably in September, the first hydrogen bus will make its appearance on behalf of OSY.

This emerged from yesterday’s position of the CEO of the company, Stefanos Agiasoglou, at an Economist conference.

OSY will cooperate with Dimokritos, which has already created the first filling station for small hydrogen vehicles in Greece, and with the company Solaris.

The test operation of the hydrogen bus is considered to be carried out on the line “Ano Kypseli – Pagrati – Kaisariani” or on the circular route “Omonoia – Kolymbitirii”.

The tender for the 650 new buses in Athens and Thessaloniki continues

The CEO of OSY spoke, among other things at the above conference, about the initiatives of the Greek government and the Ministry of Transport to renew the company’s fleet of vehicles, through the ongoing international tender.

Mr. Ayasoglou argued that the tender is in the first phase and the second phase will soon follow, with the aim of the first new buses arriving in 2023.

“The adoption of electric buses”, as he said, “is connected with the reorganization of the business in the company, from the restructuring of the routes to the train stations”, with an emphasis on innovation and in this context, the test routes with the hydrogen bus will be carried out.

Regarding the development of the large tender for the supply of new buses in Athens and Thessaloniki, it is noted that the first of the five sections of the tender was declared barren (100 – 120 hybrid buses).

The big competition now continues for the remaining 4 sections, so we are “talking” about a competition of 650 buses.

According to convergent information from the commercial car market, the binding offers submitted are as follows:

-For the supply of 200 simple 12-meter city vehicles, compressed natural gas (CNG) EURO VI category, bids were submitted by the Italian Industria Italiana Autobus and IVECO.

-For the supply of 100 18-meter modular city vehicles, compressed natural gas (CNG) EURO VI category, IVECO submitted a bid.

-For the supply of 100 simple electric city vehicles of 12 meters with a minimum range of 135 km, bids were submitted by Irizar, Van Hool, IVECO and BYD.

-Finally, for the supply of 250 simple 12-meter electric city vehicles with a minimum range of 180 km, bids were submitted by Irizar, BYD and YUTONG.

According to information from the commercial car market, the technical evaluation of the two departments for the CNG buses will be completed by August, while the completion of the corresponding process for the electric ones is postponed until after the summer, as everything shows.

In any case, the aim is to announce the contractors and sign the contracts by the end of the year.