“It is a great success. Our battery-electric buses are already on the road in Valencia, as in many other Spanish cities,” said Robert Katzer, Head of Sales & Product Bus at MAN Truck & Bus, adding: “The fact that the MAN eBus fleet is being further expanded clearly shows how satisfied drivers, operators and passengers are with our vehicles.”

However, it remains to be seen which equipment and configuration the public transport company has opted for in the 57 Lion’s City 12 E. MAN currently offers the model with four and five 89-kWh battery packs, which means that a total of 356 and 445 kWh are available. In future, however, a variant with six packs and up to 534 kWh will also be available to order. MAN is also not providing any technical details on the other 27 Lion’s City 18 vehicles with EfficientHybrid technology.

These are likely to follow when the first units arrive in the Spanish coastal city. However, it will be some time before then: The vehicles are to be delivered in stages from the end of 2026.

With a total of 84 new buses, MAN says it has “secured the largest share of one of the most extensive public orders for electric and hybrid buses in Spain this year.” The commercial vehicle manufacturer was awarded the contract for two of four lots. The contract is worth around 50 million euros and includes not only the vehicle delivery but also the maintenance of the MAN buses.

According to MAN, EMT Valencia has put a total of 161 buses out to tender for fleet renewal – details of the drive types were not provided. “The fleet conversion is part of a comprehensive investment program with a total volume of around 170 million euros, which provides for the introduction of 218 new electric and hybrid buses by 2028,” says MAN. EMT Valencia already received a loan of 69 million euros from the European Investment Bank (EIB) at the beginning of the year. At that time, there was still talk of procuring 145 electric buses, 66 hybrid buses and four minibuses, without specifying the type of drive and the necessary charging infrastructure.

With this step, the transport company aims to significantly reduce the average age of its fleet and reduce the proportion of diesel-only vehicles to less than seven per cent by 2027. However, the majority would still have a combustion engine on board. This is because around 61 per cent would be hybrid buses and just over 32 per cent would be purely electric buses.

Within six years, the commercial vehicle manufacturer claims to have successfully deployed 2,500 vehicles from the ‘Lion’s City E’ product family, which are said to have already covered more than 100 million kilometres. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, sales totalled 283 electric buses, which corresponds to more than 50 per cent of the city buses sold by MAN in Europe.

mantruckandbus.com