Portugal – With sales success of its battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell city bus models, the Portuguese bus and coach builder, CaetanoBus SA of Vila Nova de Gaia, has drawn up plans not only to expand its portfolio of zero emission city and interurban bus models, but also to embark on expanding production at its plant in Gaia to meet future demand.

Nuno Lago de Carvalho, chief commercial officer, CaetanoBus, in an interview with T&BB at Euro Mobility Expo 2022 in Paris during June, said three new models were planned.

New zero-emission city bus / inter-urban models planned

The first is the new generation 12m FC low-entry bus with aluminium body and new generation fuel cell (Toyota FC Gen 2) offering more power and greater efficiency. It plans to bring this model to market in 2023.

In late 2023 / 2024, it plans to bring to market an articulated 18m city bus with new chassis and new body in stainless steel. This will be available with both FC and BE powertrains. Carvalho pointed out that this would be the very first time Caetano would be building its own articulated chassis – see recent T&BB article about Caetano supplying a battery electric 12m chassis to CIAO in Brazil as part of a partnership initiative.

The next new model is the 12m low-entry model with new chassis and new body also made from stainless steel to comply with R66 rollover regulations and to able to offer its bus in the interurban market segments. Whilst the vehicle would be heavier than its aluminium bodied buses due to use of the stainless steel, the advantage is that they will meet Class 2 rollover safety requirements. This model will be available with both battery electric and fuel cell powertrains.

Fuel cell powered coaches planned for 2024 and 2025

Carvalho added that its coach business – notably for its contract with National Express in the UK - it will offer a fuel cell-powered coach in right hand drive from 2024 and a left hand drive version for Europe in 2025. Both vehicles, again would be offered for the first time on its own in house chassis. Carvalho added that whilst it was no longer offering fossil fuel buses for the urban sector, it would continue to offer diesel-powered coaches on Scania chassis. To ensure long distance capability of its fuel cell coach range it is looking to use 700 bar technology (rather than 350 bar) and two fuel cell stacks.

CaetanoBus plans to more than double production capacity by 2027

CaetanoBus spent much of 2021 producing BEV and HFC city bus orders won in 2019 and 2020, stated Carvalho, and whilst the market continued to be slow at the start of 2022, it’s order bank is now ramping up: Patrícia Vasconcelos, CEO of the company at the recent VDV-Electric Bus Conference in Berlin announced that following the launch of H2.City Gold bus in 2020 it has sold more than 75 units, mainly to Germany (51), with most deliveries taking place this year. By the end of 2022, it expects sales to exceed 100 units.

This year (2022) and next year (2023) CaetanoBus plans to produce around 800 vehicles (Cobus (airport bus – jointly built with Mercedes-Benz), city buses and coaches. This is the current capacity of its plant in Gaia. By 2024, it plans to expand production capacity of its BE and FC city buses by 450 units and then by 2027, add an additional 450 city bus units taking to its total potential output to more than double its current capacity (800).

To achieve this, it plans to build a new production line on a greenfield site in Ovar, Portugal (which is near to the current Gaia site); the new factory will be dedicated to the manufacture for BEV and FC city buses.

At the same time as adding to production capacity, it is adding to its sales and distribution channels. For instance, a year ago (July 2021), CaetanoBus signed the Louwman Group, a Dutch automobile distributor company, as its sales agent for the Netherlands. Carvalho said that a new sales director, Michelle Albrand, had been appointed for France where Caetano now has a foreign register company. CaetanoBus is now looking to establishing a local aftersales partner in France and is working with a truck and bus service partner in France. In Germany it works with a sales and service partner to cover a 100km radius of the customer with heavy investment in partner training to support and service vehicles. In Italy it is currently appointing a sales director and an aftersales network. In the UK, it has Caetano UK.

Carvalho pointed out that while Salvador Caetano still remains the majority owner in CaetanoBus through Toyota Caetano Portugal SA (a JV between Salvador Caetano (63%) and Toyota Motor Europe (27%), which holds 62% in CaetanoBus together with Mitsui & Co (38%); the support it is able receive from its co-owners in terms of knowledge, distribution networks and production systems.