And the sun comes out again as we set off from Strasbourg. The heavens are smiling! Today sees us travelling from Strasbourg through the gentle hills of the Vosges, past plenty of vineyards, oilseed rape fields and fruit orchards, to Luxembourg. There, we’ll be meeting with Voyages Emile Weber, an important MAN customer, who is already running eight Lion’s City E buses. But first, we’ll be visiting the Rosières solar park, which has more than 1.4 million solar panels, and the Centre Pompidou in Metz, famous for its exhibitions of contemporary art. A little bit of culture never did anyone any harm. 

What an enormous facility! Not far from the French town of Rosières-en-Haye lies the 367-hectare Rosières solar park with a nominal power output of 115 megawatts – a ground-mounted photovoltaic power plant. Formerly a military airfield, it now hosts more than 1.4 million solar panels, standing side by side. Just count them! The operator says that the park should be able to supply some 55,000 homes with electricity. Ooh... Just imagine how quickly we could charge our bus!  

Here’s an interesting aside, as we meander gently through the French countryside: while buses in France must bear stickers on the outside to highlight their blind spot, or “angle mort”, our electric bus has an active warning turning assistant on board that uses cameras at the rear to monitor all the bus’s blind spots and warn the driver using different colours and sounds if there is a risk of collision. 

The digital and camera-based OptiView system that replaces mirrors, significantly reducing the blind spot with wide-angle and normal cameras, also helps us out during these stages. Even at night or in bad weather, the system has clear advantages over a traditional mirror, because it brightens or dims dark or blurred areas. As part of the “road safety education” campaign, MAN travels to schools and enables children to experience just how big the blind spots are so that they can understand better. The blind spot of a bus is big enough to hide almost an entire school class. 

We’re indulging in some culture in the picturesque city of Metz, capital of the Moselle department, with a visit to the Centre Pompidou, a contemporary art gallery and sister institution to the famous Centre Pompidou in Paris. The building catches the eye with its fascinating architecture, the work of architects Shigeru Ban (Japan) and Jean de Gastines (France). 

The Luxembourg-based travel company Voyages Emile Weber is a family business founded in 1875. Today, it is one of the largest passenger transportation and tourism companies in Luxembourg and the surrounding area. Emile Weber is currently using eight MAN Lion’s City E buses on scheduled routes in Luxembourg – and has ordered a further nine articulated e-buses to be delivered later in 2022. 

The company tells us that all the buses are technically sophisticated and run very reliably. To train their drivers on the e-buses, new learning modules have been created which are now a part of the “WeberAcademy”. The buses can be charged at five of the company’s own sites, installed at various points in Luxembourg. Emile Weber believes that the next development will be smart charging: in the future, buses will not be blindly charged to 100 percent, but just according to their individual needs. Each bus will then only receive the electricity it needs for its journey. 

We leave Voyages Emile Weber in the evening sun – it’s shining here too! – and we cruise a little more through the narrow streets of Luxembourg. This bus is extremely manoeuvrable. Suddenly, we are shocked to realise that our tour is half over. We have covered 1,264.7 kilometres so far, at an average of 35.1 kilometres per hour, and we have used a total of 949.6 kWh. We could drive on forever – it’s such a pleasant journey, and in a public bus too! Who’d have thought it? We’re off to our seventh country tomorrow: Belgium. We’re already looking forward to our next few exciting, quiet kilometres. Gutt Nuecht!