When space is at a premium and you need to charge multiple vehicles at high power, you might be required to build chargers upstairs
Together with launch of series production of electric buses, Daimler retrofitted its Mannheim bus plant in Germany with a new central electric charging station for Mercedes-Benz eCitaro.
It’s quite interesting to look at the approach to implement electrification. In the case of the Mannheim plant, there is a 1.2 MW station with four 150 kW DC CCS Combo 2 stalls plus two different overhead charging systems (300 kW each) for two stands.
The newly produced eCitaro can be now fast charged and tested ahead of customer delivery. Additionally, the station will be used for the development of new products as well as for presentation to customers.
Interesting thing is that all the chargers are installed around five meters above the ground to save space at the facility.
Similar stations might be the way to go also for many bus depots, limited by space.
Central electric charging station for the Mercedes-Benz eCitaro at the Mannheim bus plant
Flexible and modular infrastructure concept for the relevant charging solutions: charging via cable, pantograph and charging rail
The charging station is compatible with all common charging technologies: 150 kW cable-bound charging, 300 kW rapid charging using a pantograph on the bus roof and 300 kW rapid charging using a permanently installed set of charging rails on the roof of the bus. In technical jargon, the latter is referred to as an inverted pantograph.
All four parking bays are setup to handle the particularly common cable-bound charging of the eCitaro. And in line with this, it can handle the different charging systems of two manufacturers. Using them, buses can be charged with an output of 150 kW. Two parking bays additionally offer rapid charging via the vehicle roof; one uses a pantograph, the other uses charging rails. In both cases, the charging output is 300 kW. The entire system has a modular design to ensure that it can be expanded as required.
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