A hydrogen bus will run on Barrandová. Prague and Škoda will try out the technology
The Prague transport company took over the H’City hydrogen bus from Škoda Electric. In January, it will start running on line 170 from the South City to Barrandová. The program will last two years, during which the city and the manufacturer will gain practical experience with the new technology. The transport company rents the bus and pays for the kilometers driven.
Representatives of the transport company and the Prague municipality took over the H’City bus from the Škoda Electric company at the Český bus exhibition. Thus, the memorandum signed in March of this year on the test operation of the hydrogen bus was fulfilled. The third party to the memorandum is Unipetrol, which will supply the fuel.
The transport company already operates fourteen battery electric buses, by the spring of next year there will also be fifteen battery trolleybuses, and a competition has been announced for another seventy. After long preparations, Unipetrol is completing the filling station in Barrandov. It should start regularly by the end of the year.
The location of the filling station is one of the reasons for using the bus on line 170, which leads to Barrandová from the South City. The second reason is the high altitude, where the effect on fuel consumption and the ability to recover energy when driving downhill will be tested.
The bus is based on the Škoda E’City battery type. It has Škoda electric equipment and Canadian Ballard hydrogen cells installed in the body from the Turkish company Temsa. On the roof are tanks for 39 kilograms of hydrogen, which is enough for a range of up to 350 kilometers. In the back, instead of the last five seats, a Nano Power battery with a capacity of 29 kilowatt hours is installed.
The contract states a price of 54 crowns without VAT per kilometer published in the register of the transport company. With an estimated run of 80,000 kilometers in two years, the transport company will pay the manufacturer 4.3 million crowns, not including fuel costs.
High driving costs continue to be the biggest obstacle to the development of emission-free vehicles in public transport. Hydrogen technologies are just entering the phase of mass production and their price has not yet stabilized. In the sum of infrastructure costs, it is estimated to be four to five times that of a diesel bus.
Public transport operators, according to EU Directive 2019/1161, by 2025 in contracts for 41% of low-emission buses, half of which are zero-emission.
The Prague transport company has a plan for the purchase of battery trolleybuses, electric buses, and hybrid diesel buses. Implementation depends on processes such as building permits for infrastructure, but also on financing.
In the first phase, it will not be possible without subsidies. The question is how quickly the market prices of new technologies will continue to fall. “Of course, the subsidy has passed the cost of the vehicle, but it will worsen the possibility of future renewal of vehicles and infrastructure. After the end of their useful lives, subsidies will be necessary again, because the remaining depreciation will not be enough even for simply renewing the assets,” Daniel Šabík, head of the communication department of the transport company, wrote to the Aktuálně.cz editors .
Battery-powered trolleybuses and electric buses are currently cheaper than hydrogen-powered buses, the advantage of which, however, is the possibility of diversifying sources.
“The task of the transport company is to provide public transport in Prague even in crisis situations, for example in the event of a metro interruption or blackout. That is why we want to keep at least a quarter of the vehicle fleet independent of the charging infrastructure,” Jan Barchánek explained when handing over the Škoda H’City to the bus service.