A new hydrogen bus put into service in France

The La Roche-sur-Yon metropolitan area is also experimenting with hydrogen buses. It has just inaugurated Vendée’s first hydrogen station and put a first bus into service on one of its lines.

Toyota has indeed announced its first delivery of a hydrogen bus in France. Co-branded Toyota and CaetanoBus, the H2.City Gold is a 12-meter city bus. It is manufactured by the Portuguese manufacturer CaetanoBus and is based on the same fuel cell as the Toyota Mirai.

It has five hydrogen tanks that can be filled in 9 minutes, giving it a range of just over 400 km. The equivalent battery electric bus from Caetano, the e.City Gold, offers a range of 300 km by comparison and recharges in several hours (385 kWh with peak charging power of 150 kW).

This makes hydrogen particularly suitable for intensive-road mobility, especially for transport vehicle operators.

A “Green” Hydrogen Station

The bus will be refueled at a multi-energy station inaugurated for the occasion in La Roche-sur-Yon. It offers “hydrogen produced by an electrolyzer with electricity partly coming from nearby wind turbines,” in Bouin, as well as natural gas (GNC) from “methanizers installed on farms in the department,” and electricity generated by “local photovoltaic power plants.”

Experiments Since 2019

Hydrogen buses are already running in several cities in France. Île-de-France Mobilités launched a first experiment in September 2019 in Yvelines, on the Versailles Chantier-Jouy-en-Josas line. IDF Mobilités plans to test the performance, reliability, and profitability of the technology over seven years.

Six hydrogen buses operate in the Béthune-Bruay metropolitan area in Pas-de-Calais, and eight hydrogen tram-buses have been running through the city of Pau since November 2019. In its 2021 annual report, the France Hydrogen association also cataloged initiatives in Auxerre, Bordeaux, Châteauroux, and Rouen.