Ganz from Baja would break into the market with a special electric bus

The Hungarian-Czech developed GANZ-SOR EBN8 was presented e-midibus prototype in the Városliget. The two-door vehicle is eight meters long and has a range of 300 kilometers. Rudolf Pencz, the managing director of Ganz Transelektro Közlekedesi Beberedezingeket Gyártó Kft. (GTKB) in Baja, answered our questions on the spot.

How long did it take to develop the new product and who added what?

Pencz Rudolf: The production of this prototype took two strong years, from the time we signed a cooperation agreement with the Czech vehicle manufacturing company SOR, ordered the coach body, designed, procured and manufactured the main components, then assembled the entire bus, and finally the various tests and trials we completed and obtained the type license.

The Czech part is the chassis, which means the entire chassis, steering gear, brakes and interior equipment, while ours is the electric drive system itself, which makes the vehicle go and work.

How many people worked on this in this country?

P.R.: The GTKB team in Baja, and especially our development engineering, worked on this. 30 of the 110 colleagues worked on this project. The development engineering, with about 5 people, whose personal knowledge was essentially the basis of the development of the entire bus, should be singled out. They are old Ganzo engineers who also contributed to the development and production of trolleybuses in the past.

How did this idea come about and how was it financed?

P.R.: Five years ago, we came to the conclusion that electromobility is an organic continuation of our natural development path. Practically, this means charging equipment and electric vehicles. On the other hand, we were always aware of our size and capabilities. For example, we never thought that we could ever compete with large manufacturing companies that produce hundreds or thousands of 12 or 18 meter buses. However, we can find our market in the midi category.

The financing was partly self-funded and partly from GINOP Plus grant funding. The project, which started in 2022 and has a total value of about 488.5 million, was realized with a non-refundable European Union grant of about 281.2 million forints.

How important is the project in the life of the company? Could it mean a successful future for the shoulder?

P.R.: I think that e-mobility, i.e. the production of the vehicle itself and the charging equipment connected to it, is becoming a stronger and more important business, which we have just established.

Is it already available for pre-order?

P.R.: There isn’t. We are presenting this now, and offering it for sale from the moment it first went live. We are in negotiations, and there will be tenders for which we are there and we are very confident that we will win them.

Is there a prescribed amount of tests that had to be run?

P.R.: The bus is ready, and then it must be approved by the traffic authority, which will issue the type permit. This is a national small series type license, based on which it will be manufactured as soon as we have it in our hands. To get this, of course, a lot of tests had to be done: EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) test, noise measurements, tilting and the like.

In the case of a suitable order, how many buses would they be able to produce in the current state?

P.R.: Our plan is fifty per year.

Is there any preliminary interest in their new city midibus?

P.R.: We presented it to Volánbus, BKV and smaller Hungarian transport companies. This type of bus, the midibus, is suitable for meeting specific transport needs where a large bus is not justified.

Which is the real deal: electric bus charging equipment or electric buses?

P.R.: Basically, charging equipment is preferred, but we also see good business positions in this bus category, because the market is not flooded with vehicles and solutions in the 8 to 9.5 meter category, while there is a lot of scramble and competition for solo buses.

As a manufacturer, how do you see the future of urban public transport? In which direction can it move: gas, electric or just a fixed track?

P.R.: I think what will emerge is a healthy mix, and not some bigoted single direction. Business rationality will decide the question of where and what type of vehicle should be set up. There will be a place for modern diesels as well as gas, electric or even hydrogen powered vehicles. We see that policy makers are increasingly recognizing this direction as well.

I am convinced that the connected tracks, trams and trolleybuses have such very serious advantages that they will make these vehicles inevitable in the traffic of the near future. We see that trolleybuses are experiencing a renaissance. They also appear in cities where they were discontinued a long time ago, or perhaps never operated at all.

Why is the 300 kilometer range enough for this purely electric midibus?

P.R.: This is enough for the daily traffic task. With a range of three hundred kilometers, it is enough to charge at the end of the day. The operator’s rule of thumb, which has a very strong, decent reserve, calculates exactly this 300 kilometers. By the way, we say that such ranges should not be fetishized in urban traffic, because the point is not for the vehicle to carry a large battery pack, which enables it to have a longer range, but to carry many passengers with a lower base weight.

A huge battery pack capable of providing a long range is also not advisable, because its lifespan is also finite and it does not matter how much investment resources must be mobilized to replace the battery pack in 8-10 years, while the structure of the bus has a much longer lifespan.

How many passengers can the new electric midibus transport?

P.R.: It has a total of 16 seats and can carry 32 standing passengers, but the comfortable number of people is, by definition, less than that. This is a low-entry bus that is accessible. If there is a wheelchair, it also requires 8 standing spaces.

What is the value of the battery in this bus?

P.R.: This is a battery pack worth 150,000 euros (about HUF 58.7 million).

Where would it be practical to use the bus, where you don’t have to transport a lot of people?

P.R.: The midibus is ideal for tourist destinations. A very good example of this is the Buda Castle, where a flight is needed that takes tourists around and can move in places where a large bus cannot fit. At the same time, the electric midibus can be useful for on-board services, where it takes passengers from agglomeration settlements, for example, to the BKV or MÁV network.

One of the key ideas of our application was that this bus is specifically optimized to serve not only as a vehicle for communities that produce renewable energy, but also as a moving energy storage unit thanks to its battery pack.

The vehicle can communicate with superior traffic control systems, they can call out to charge when extra electricity is available, which it is advisable to put in or even feed back electricity.

Thus, renewable energy produced by the energy community, which they cannot use immediately, can be placed in the batteries of, for example, 3-4 buses, which also serve as vehicles.

The experience of the operators is that during the Covid epidemic, the number of passengers fell and this did not recover. On routes where a 12-meter bus was previously required, even a smaller bus would now be able to handle the traffic tasks in abundance. In addition, due to their size and maneuverability, smaller vehicles can better serve the traveling public, and in Hungarian, they can go where larger ones cannot.