Oslo's future stands, surrounded by snow, on the outskirts of the city, in the Alnabru district. An icy parking lot at dawn, dozens of red buses, three endless rows of white charging stations. What is currently probably the largest electric bus depot in Europe can be viewed here. A milestone in emission-free mobility that Norwegians were particularly proud of. Until the harshest winter in ten years hit the country.
At temperatures of up to minus 20 degrees, the battery capacity decreased, the range decreased rapidly and trips were canceled. What followed? International malice, especially Germany, was blaspheming. “Cold brings brand new electric buses to a standstill in Oslo,” said Bild happily. The “FAZ” criticized a “fair-weather technology that only guarantees freedom under ideal conditions” – and declared Norway a symbol of environmental harassment from Brussels, even if the country is not even in the EU. The blog “Tichys Insight,” which specializes in outrage, concluded: “Public transport has completely collapsed in Oslo.”
Has winter exposed the supposed technology of the future as an illusion? So can you sit back in your heated diesel engine, happy to have just escaped electro-communism? And what do the people of Oslo say about the fact that apparently nothing works for them anymore?
6:54 a.m. on Tuesday morning, time for a drive through the snow crisis area in rush hour traffic. Mukhtar Ahmad is behind the wheel. As his bus rolls out of the depot, the screen in front of him already shows four minutes late. The electric bus hums quietly. As planned, the battery was preheated by a colleague in order to run as efficiently as possible. Ahmad, 57, looks at the screen that has replaced his rearview mirror in the new bus and drives off.
The roads are free of ice this morning, the temperatures are just below freezing, and it is expected to snow again later. In front of Ahmad, beefy electric cars press into the center, along with a number of Teslas, as well as Volvos and Chinese SUVs. Hardly any cars from Germany. When the first passengers get on the articulated bus, it is just before half past seven. Ahmad drives carefully along the serpentines into the valley, brakes at a barrier and complains quietly. Three minutes again.
Ahmad has been driving buses for 25 years, and has been continuously electric since last year. His 1,500 colleagues elected him as their first confidant; he is, in a sense, the most powerful bus driver in Oslo.
The city wants to make local public transport completely emission-free by the end of 2024; not even the Chinese have dared to take such a step so far. 183 electric buses were delivered last May by the Polish manufacturer Solaris, and 76 more by MAN at the end of the year. The Polish buses alone cost the equivalent of 100 million euros.
Can Ahmad perhaps explain the crisis?
He sighs quietly and thinks. “The buses work and drive well,” he says, “but you just have to adapt.”
Tired students and commuters sit in the rows behind him. A week ago, there were times when there were no buses on the road in front of him, colleagues skidded several times on black ice, and many new vehicles had to be charged prematurely because the loading capacity was actually halved on the coldest days at minus 20 degrees. The fact that subways and trains were also canceled did not matter, at least for the international critics.
»You just have to plan the tours differently in winter and set up more charging stations. Then it works."
As Ahmed speaks, a total of eleven screens light up around him. Four alone replace the rearview mirror, three show camera images of the doors. Green and red lights flicker everywhere. An iPhone-sized display constantly shows whether Ahmad is driving and braking efficiently, and how long the delay is. At dusk and in his spring-loaded chair, he sometimes looks more like a gamer in his cockpit than the driver of an 18-meter-long red Solaris Urbino articulated bus.
“We underestimated it,” explains a senior employee of the largest bus company, Unibuss, who clandestinely wants to meet for a beer but does not want to be quoted by name. The international ridicule has left its mark. After 100 years of diesel, the switch to an electric fleet is a historical change, he explains. Anyone who takes new paths must first recognize and remove obstacles. Changes are initially uncomfortable.
Efficient driving is now particularly important in e-buses. In the old buses, energy savings were a maximum of five percent, now it's 20 percent or more.
A few days ago, the municipal transport company Ruter lowered the interior temperature in the buses from 18 to 13 degrees in order to further increase the range. In the diesel buses, the engines themselves produced waste heat due to inefficiency - now that they have been replaced by more modern technology, what we have been used to for decades is suddenly missing. Is it just different or worse?
If we continued to heat as before, the buses would use 40 percent of their energy in winter just for this, according to the transport company. Anyone who gets in when the temperature is below zero can probably cope with the change.
Bus driver Mukhtar Ahmad doesn't think much of it. The 13 degrees are an unreasonable expectation for his passengers. Ahmad and his colleagues strictly insist on 18 degrees, as the unions had negotiated with the company years ago. They think 20 to 22 would be even better. “The technology has to adapt to us and not the other way around,” says shop steward Ahmad now and accelerates quietly.
In the past, drivers were allowed to test new buses extensively, he complains. Now they have hastily ordered the only available models in order to be first in climate protection. The necessary adjustments have only now been made; the bus drivers are testing live, so to speak.
Ekeberg hageby stop. According to Ahmad's display, the temperature in the back row of seats is currently 10 degrees. Sometimes changing isn't nice. But at least the bus is moving.
In fact, around 5.5 percent of all bus trips were canceled in January, and things didn't look much better in the weeks before. However, such rates would often be a success story for local transport in the greater Berlin area or Deutsche Bahn. In this country, there are sometimes significantly more outages even in the summer - and even in Munich.
For Oslo, on the other hand, it is indeed a devastating result - with 16,000 daily bus tours, punctuality values of 99.7 percent are usual.
The bus is now driving uphill, it is slowly getting emptier, and Mukhtar Ahmad starts talking at the wheel. After all, the bus is the only public transport where you can actually talk directly to the driver, he notes.
Despite everything, Ahmad is proud of his job. Oslo is a good home for him as an immigrant, and exchanging ideas with people is something he likes. Even if more passengers are now complaining.
However, there is no one on his bus or outside who wants to speak out against electric vehicles. People complain about the weather, but not only politicians are sticking to the transport turnaround - but also the population.
The passengers don't have to worry about much apart from stress anyway. The transport company guarantees punctual transport, and taxi credits worth the equivalent of 66 euros are available for delays of 20 minutes or more. 11,000 of these have been applied for in the past few weeks. The transport companies have already promised to pay them out despite force majeure. One can only hope that no one in Germany finds out about it.
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