KAMAZ ELECTRIC BUSES FOR RUSSIAN REGIONS

12 October 2021

Russian regions show a high interest for the innovative electric transport of KAMAZ PTC. A KAMAZ electric bus has finished its trial operation in Kazan. Next in line are Belgorod and Ufa.

Last week, on October 7, the first KAMAZ electric bus finished its trial operation in Kazan. It ran along Trolleybus Route 3 "Akademika Glushko – River Port", charging at a special charging island at the final stop. According to the Kazan MUE Metroelektrotrans, the tested KAMAZ electric bus showed its advantages. Thus, unlike a trolleybus, it does not depend on overhead lines, eliminating downtime because of breaks and accidents on the roadway. The rolling stock can stay on the routes longer because an electric bus needs maintenance half as often as a trolleybus. The fleet can be updated less often thanks to a service life of an electric bus (15 years) which is longer than that of a trolleybus (12 years).

Metroelektrotrans specialists compared a trolleybus and an electric bus and calculated that the electric bus saves 57,480 rubles per month (consuming 144,000 kW) and 8,277,120 rubles (1,728,000 kW) for 12 years. For three months of trial operation, KAMAZ's eco-friendly innovative vehicle carried over 38,500 passengers and traveled more than 14,560 km. Now the company will prepare for the possible operation of electric buses in Kazan. It will train drivers and depot personnel, develop a destination network and install fast chargers.

“The KAMAZ electric bus transferred to Kazan for testing gave no rise to complaints from the operating organization. It is worthy of note that passengers could leave their feedback directly in the electric bus. There was a QR code and a telephone number for communication in the passenger compartment. As a result, during the three months operation of the electric bus, the townspeople left more than 1000 positive reviews about it on the portal and via the hotline of the Kazan Transport Committee,” said Andrey Dolganov, Head of the Electric Passenger Transport Promotion Service of KAMAZ PTC. “In the near future, we plan to transfer this specimen for trial running-in in Belgorod. We are also considering testing another KAMAZ electric bus in Ufa. Other regions are also interested in our electric transport, but it is too early to talk about the supply of large numbers of these innovative vehicles."

Sergey Kogogin, General Director of KAMAZ PTC, and Vyacheslav Gladkov, Governor of Belgorod Oblast, met earlier in Moscow and agreed to transfer a KAMAZ electric bus for test operation for three months. “This is an environmentally friendly, promising transport means. I hope that its testing will help us see how we can change the infrastructure. However, this is a quite expensive project. We cannot but raise subsidies from the federal budget. I hope we will succeed,” said Vyacheslav Gladkov.

In September, a similar agreement on the trial operation of the KAMAZ electric bus was reached between the management of KAMAZ PTC and the head of the Republic of Bashkortostan. The new type of a vehicle will run along one of the city routes in Ufa for several months. “We agreed with the management of KAMAZ to test the first electric bus in Ufa this year in order to make cost-benefit analysis, as well as to gather our citizens’ opinions,” explained the head of the republic Radiy Khabirov.

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