In February last year Budapest public transport operator BKK announced the public procurement for a total of 160 single and articulated trolleybuses, including options. The investment is planned to be financed from European Union funds. Now Hungarian Magyarbusz.info reports that four manufacturers applied for the call in the first round: Ikarus teamed up with Yutong, the world's largest bus manufacturer, but Solaris, Škoda Group and Bozankaya also announced their participation. The official result of the tender is expected within 1-2 months.
By the end of the bidding phase, the lineup had changed somewhat: as could already be heard in professional rumors, Škoda, which started with the SOR body, had in the meantime withdrawn from the competition as an independent bidder, so the winner will be chosen from among the other three candidates. According to information obtained by Magyarbusz.info, the incoming bids have been opened, and based on this, the final result seems to be taking shape – and although the procedure may still have twists and turns, the vehicles themselves look promising in all three cases. According to the overall evaluation, the joint tender of Ikarus and Yutong received the most points, which was submitted as the lead bidder by Electrobus Europe Zrt., the distributor of the Hungarian manufacturer’s products. For both solo and articulated trolleybuses, this offer contains the lowest purchase price per unit – this means 451,500 euros for solos and 649,500 euros for articulated ones – which in both cases is given a weighting of 35 during the evaluation. It was questionable for a
long time exactly what kind of vehicles the two companies would deliver to Budapest, since Ikarus does not currently manufacture trolleybuses, and Yutong is also present in Europe with its battery-powered electric buses – the Chinese giant’s trolleybuses are known mainly in Latin America outside of their home country, and the closest we can find them is in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. However, the units intended for Budapest would differ from them in terms of bodywork, as according to our current information, the offered trolleybuses would be based on Yutong’s premium electric city models U12 and U18. It is not yet clear under what brand name the vehicles would arrive in the event of a tender victory, but we know that at least some domestic assembly could take place after the delivery of the first 40 units, which corresponds to the mandatory basic quantity specified in the tender notice. (Image Yutong Bus & Coach, montage: MBI Grafika)
In second place is the Turkish company Bozankaya, which has recently been mobilizing great forces to gain ground in the Central European region, which would bring the trolley version of the new E-Bus model family (the solo SNG T12 and the articulated SNG T18 models) introduced last May to Budapest – after Timisoara and Prague. The company, known primarily as a manufacturer of track-bound vehicles, also made the cheapest offer in terms of component prices, maintenance and training costs, but since these criteria are only taken into account with a weighting of 5, 3 and 2 respectively, this is not enough to turn the competition around, as the Turks are asking 569,000 euros for the solo trolleybuses, and 729,000 euros for their articulated counterparts. Similar to the Ikarus-Yutong duo, Bozankaya is also offering an extra 36-month warranty for the vehicles. This is what Bozankaya's trolleybus in Budapest colors would look like (Scenic design: MBI Grafika)
Somewhat surprisingly, Solaris, which has supplied a total of 108 new trolleybuses to Budapest in recent years, came in third place, well behind the others. The Polish manufacturer would only offer the vehicles – members of the well-known Trollino series – at a much higher purchase price, with the solo units priced at 799,000 euros each and the articulated units at 973,000 euros, meaning that a solo unit would be more expensive than the articulated units offered by the other two entrants. Moreover, it did all this without an additional warranty and with a self-propelling capability of only 15 kilometers instead of the 25 provided by its competitors, so it could not overcome its opponents on any evaluation criteria.
The official result of the tender is expected within 1-2 months, which can only be considered final after the subsequent moratorium on contracting has expired. Moreover, since there is still no official source for vehicle procurement, it is doubtful when the new trolleybuses will arrive on the streets of Budapest. Nevertheless, the decision is serious on the part of the capital, as BKK plans to significantly expand the Budapest trolleybus network, which currently has a line length of about 155 kilometers, by more than double it by 2030, in which the 160 new vehicles to be purchased now will play a key role. As a basis for this, BKK recently announced a tender for the modernization of the Pongrácz út trolleybus depot, which we reported on in more detail in this article.
By Patthy Gellért