UK / Argentina – This month sees a new low floor electric bus chassis go on display at Busworld Europe in Brussels. The e-chassis is a collaboration between CELEB (Cost effective ELEctric Bus) - a consortium of five UK suppliers with EV drivetrain expert, EquipMake Ltd as the lead company and Agrale Argentina of Mercedes, Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina (the Argentine subsidiary of Brazil’s commercial and agricultural vehicle maker, Agrale SA of Caxias do Sul, RS). The companies, which came together to develop a low entry electric chassis for the city of Buenos Aires in Argentina (see separate article in this month’s supplement on South America), is displaying the new chassis prototype at the show to gauge market response from body builders. Its intention is to see whether it can find customers that would be interested in entering a programme that would lead to production in around two years’ time.

Ian Foley, managing director of Equipmake, said that technologically, the market in Brazil was more advanced than Argentina and closer to the European market. Subsequently, while it would launch the Agrale electric low floor chassis in Brussels in Europe, it was also eyeing the market in Brazil. Foley stated that whilst there was significant demand now in Europe for electric buses, one of the challenges was that of scaling up. He said that realistically it would take two years to produce a fully validated reliable product but, in the meantime, if there was significant market pull, the consortium could get companies engaged earlier in the prototype development programme. Foley said his company had undertaken the initial prototype development of powertrain and it had started now preparing for production.  In three months’time, for example, a full powertrain rig would be running 24 hours a day, as well as battery testing, hot and cold temperature testing, and vibration testing. In addition, the first low entry chassis with Toda Bus body goes on trial in Buenos Aires, Argentina in Q1 next year.