IVU.suite: Intelligent Depot Management at ESWE Verkehr in Wiesbaden

Berlin, 7 August 2024 | Fully automated and integrated – the ESWE Verkehrs­gesellschaft mbH (ESWE Verkehr) now relies entirely on the IVU.suite from IVU Traffic Technologies AG for its entire electric bus fleet both on the street and in the depot.

A key transport provider from Wiesbaden, ESWE Verkehr, transports around 60 million passengers with more than 290 buses across a network of 43 routes in the capital city of the federal state Hessen. Electric buses account for 120 eCitaro vehicles from Daimler Buses. In order to manage the significantly increased complexity of the electric buses in the depot and on the street, ESWE Verkehr now relies entirely on the IVU.suite.

Parallel to the extension of the fleet, the use of the appropriate software products was intensified: taken into operation in spring of 2021 as a smart load and charge management system with capping of load peaks for the first 25 electric buses, by fall of 2021 the fleet – having grown by then to 75 vehicles ­– was already managed with a depot management system. Since 2022, the work of the driving and workshop personnel has been made easier by displays of target parking spaces for the buses by multiple LED displays. Fully automatic vehicle working dispatch and parking space dispatch, supported by position determination in the ITCS when pulling into or out of the depot, completes the system today and ensures efficient operations.

“Electromobility presents special challenges to transport operators. In IVU we have found a reliable partner with whom we can efficiently shape the operation of our electric bus fleet,” reports Dietmar Schneider, head of staff officer in the department of Strategic Technical Orientation at ESWE Verkehr. “The use of the IVU.suite for scheduling and control of the operational procedures in the depot and on the street was also extremely helpful in managing the complexity of the task.”

“With the increasing size of the electric bus fleet, the complexity of the system increases as well” explains Dr. Karsten Wasiluk, Head of Charging Infrastructure and Energy Management at Daimler Buses Solutions. “With IVU as a partner, we were able to offer the customer precisely the solution needed for this project in order to make this complexity manageable.”

“We are pleased to be able to accompany ESWE Verkehr as a partner from the beginning in the continual development of electromobility”, says Dr. Hanna Schachel, Managing Director of Public Transport at IVU. “The good collaborative work enables us to successfully introduce our standard software and to take the particular needs of ESWE Verkehr into account. And the next step is already planned – we will extend geographical positioning to the diesel bus fleet as well.”