New Mobility Solutions through electro mobility - Deutsche Bahn and Toyota work together
Deutsche Bahn and Toyota start a demonstration project, where electric mobility will be offered in the car sharing of Deutsche Bahn trough 18 Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles provided by Toyota. "Deutsche Bahn hereby completes its offer within the chain of transportation by another forward-looking and ecologically meaningful mobility solution", Rolf Lübke, Managing Officer DB FuhrparkService GmbH, said at the start of the project.
The Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid has an electric range of around 20 kilometres. In Electric Vehicle (EV) mode, the vehicles can speed up to a maximum of 100 km/h, supported by a 5.2 kWh lithium-ion battery. Besides the recuperation of braking power which is typical for a hybrid vehicle, the Plug-in Hybrid Vehicle can also be charged at an external charging point. It takes 90 minutes at a regular 230 Volt household plug. "By driving most of the daily trips in EV mode, the Prius Plug-in Hybrid reduces its CO2 emissions from 89 g/km to 59 g/km in the European test cycle as compared to the regular Prius. This corresponds to a fuel consumption of only 2.6 litres", highlights Koei Saga, Managing Officer of Toyota Motor Corporation. "Besides the battery-electric range of around 20 kilometres, the Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid offers the quality of a high-performance full hybrid. Therefore the user can take benefit of purely electric mobility and of a significantly longer range if needed", he added.
The demonstration takes place in the context of "Be-Mobility", a research project of the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development in Berlin-Potsdam. The vehicles were handed over on July 5th at the premises of the European Energy Forum (EUREF). On the EUREF trial platform, technical system integration will be tested and research results will be published.
The objective of BeMobility is to realise CO2-free mobility in an urban environment, together with its partners Deutsche Bahn, Bosch, Contipark, DAI-Labor (Technical University Berlin), HaCON, the Innovation Centre for Mobility and Societal Change (InnoZ), RWE, SOLON, Vattenfall Europe and the transportation Berlin-Brandenburg. The well extended public transportation network in the region of the German capital will be completed by electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in a way that not only makes the customers fully mobile but that also contributes to lower emissions in the city. As only regenerative energy will be offered at the charging stations, CO2 emissions can be considerably reduced.
Ingeborg Junge-Reyer, Mayor of Berlin and Senator for Urban Development, said: "I'm happy to see that Deutsche Bahn and Toyota chose Berlin. Electric mobility has a future in Berlin. We need fresh ideas for sustainable and environmentally friendly transport systems. Electric vehicles can significantly reduce emissions and noise levels in the future and strongly contribute to the life quality in a city. The technology is still at an early stage. If we want to help electric mobility to brake through, we have to act now. In Berlin, there are about 70 battery charging stations with which we take a pioneer role as laboratory of the future of electric mobility."