ROMANIA
Turkish manufacturer Karsan has delivered its first electric e-ATA to Romania as part of an order for 56 18-metre buses worth €41 million. The first 12 e-ATA 18-metre articulated buses have been delivered to the municipality of Brasov and entered service in the new year. Karsan CEO Okan Baş said: “We started to deliver the first vehicles of the 44 e-ATA buses that we are producing for 2023 European Capital of Culture Timisoara before the new year. In addition, the installation of some of the charging stations has been completed as well. Under the agreement, a delivery of a total of 44 vehicles and installation of the charging stations were scheduled for the last quarter of 2023. However, Timisoara wanted to offer its modern public transportation service to its citizens sooner than planned. So, we pushed our planning earlier in line with this demand. We aim to complete the delivery of the remaining vehicles and the installation of the charging stations in the first half of the new year.”
Karsan will deliver 44 buses to Timisoara and 12 to Brasov. Karsan will also install 59 charging stations in the region, including 15 fast charging stations, and undertake the maintenance of the vehicles for six years. Okan continued: “Like Karsan, Romania is leading the transformation of electric vehicles in Europe as well. This pioneering vision of Romania overlaps well with Karsan’s journey of electric transformation, which began five years ago. Romania, like France and Italy, is one of Karsan’s main target markets. Today, Karsan owns about one-third of the total electric vehicles in Romania. Moreover, among the manufacturers who have their bus production bases in Turkey, Karsan stands out as the Turkish brand with the most electric buses in Romania. As of the end of 2022, while our electric vehicle number in Romania is 140, it will reach 180 in the middle of 2023 with the deliveries to be made to the Timisoara Municipality”.
Talking about the company’s growth, he added: “Turkey’s industrial power, one of the most important bus manufacturers in Europe, is gaining the appreciation of the world. As Karsan, we go beyond being a commercial vehicle manufacturer. We have managed to become one of the leading brands of electric mobility with our advanced technology transportation solutions. Karsan, which received the Sustainable Bus of the Year award at the Sustainable Bus Awards with its 12-metre e-ATA in the field of sustainable transportation in Europe, serves the European people on the streets of European countries such as France, Italy, and Luxembourg. In addition, Karsan is the market leader in Europe in its own segments with e-JEST and e-ATAK. This is a result of Karsan’s strong and solution-oriented brand perception, and we continue to develop this perception.”
Named after Ata, which means the elders of the family in Turkish, the e-ATA has various battery capacity options ranging from 198kWh to 595kWh and a fast-charging option via a pantograph on the 18-metre version. It uses electric hub motors with a maximum power of 500kW.
