The Mobility House extends its lead on the market for smart charging of electric buses in North America

July 05, 2022|Munich

  • The Mobility House’s Charging and Energy Management system ChargePilot® controls charging operations in King County Metro's largest electric bus project in the USA, generating savings of more than USD 1 million.
  • The Mobility House is currently smart charging 250 buses across North America, with a pipeline of more than 4000 electric buses planned – just from existing customers.
  • The experience the company is gaining in North America is benefiting its customers in Europe, too, where its client base includes leading bus operators like Transdev.
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To control the charging stations in what is currently the USA’s largest charging infrastructure project in local electric bus transport, public transit agency King County Metro has opted for ChargePilot, the manufacturer-independent Charging and Energy Management system from The Mobility House. The transit agency, which serves Seattle and the surrounding area, plans to gradually deploy a 100% zero-emission fleet. To that end, charging stations from various manufacturers (such as ABB, Heliox and Siemens) are being used to charge the electric buses both using the classic cable-based method and with a pantograph. Smart control of the charging processes with the help of ChargePilot meant there was no need to extend the mains connection, cutting the project’s costs by USD 1 million and speeding up its implementation time by more than two years.

Additional projects of more than 1 MW in the pipeline

With a good half a million school buses and around 100,000 local public transport buses in operation, the US market is taking the lead in bus electrification. ChargePilot® is already being used in many other projects in this respect, including

  • the Antelope Valley Transit Authority (California),
  • the Charlotte Area Transit System (North Carolina),
  • Knoxville Area Transit (Tennessee),
  • Metro Transit St. Louis (Missouri) or
  • Modesto City Schools (California).

In addition, ChargePilot® was selected as a finalist for Transit Tech Lab’s Environmental Sustainability Challenge to test the technology over an 8-week proof-of-concept period with the New York City Metro Transit Authority.

"Our strong position in the USA and the extensive expertise we have acquired with the particular challenges encountered on this market will benefit the European market too. At the same time, we are also contributing the experience we have gained from European fleet projects in the USA and Canada. Our customers are the ones who are primarily benefiting from this exchange of knowledge. The Mobility House already has several more infrastructure projects of more than 1 MW in the pipeline for this year."

Marcus Fendt,

Managing Director, The Mobility House

In Europe, The Mobility House is amongst other projects involved in electrifying Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, where a total of 100 electric buses are in operation.

The Charging and Energy Management system ChargePilot®, which has been deployed over 800 times, offers significant advantages for the bus depot electrification measures, including the manufacturer-independent integration of different DC and AC charging stations, open interfaces for depot management systems to further optimize charging processes, and a 24/7 system monitoring and error reporting feature.

More information on charging infrastructure for electric buses is also available in our free white paper "Smart charging for your electric buses".

The Mobility House at ElekBu

From July 12 to 13, The Mobility House will be an exhibitor at the Electric Bus Conference and Exhibition ElekBu of the Association of German Transport Companies in Berlin. In addition to a presentation on "Smart Charging: From Pilot Project to Rollout - Challenges & Best Practices", experts will be available at booth 20 in the Europa hall of the Estrel Congress Center Berlin to answer any electromobility-related questions.