Electric-bus routes in hilly urban areas: Overview and challenges.

The electrification of public transport in cities is expanding, and fully electric buses (EBs) show great promise because of their high energy efficiency. We present the state of the art for electric-bus-related technologies, taking a closer look at the influence of the route's topography and the climate on battery demands. Included is a brief overview of the EB routes in Europe, which reveals a lack of very demanding benchmark routes, where new technologies from the perspective of seamless driving in difficult conditions could be tested. The trial EB routes set up in many cities allow testing under a variety of driving conditions; however, there is still a need for benchmark routes located in challenging environments with some demanding sections. We suggest a new, demanding, hilly benchmark route that provides the means for a technical evaluation of urban-transport electrification in a geographically specific area with particularly challenging driving conditions. • Introducing electric buses requires their extensive testing on demanding benchmark routes. • There is a lack of demanding city routes for testing electric buses. • The challenges of testing electric buses on urban routes are presented in terms of topography and climate conditions. • A challenging, new, hilly benchmark route is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]