Toyota and CaetanoBus, the Portuguese bus manufacturing company, announced today the co-branding of the e.City Gold battery electric city bus and the H2.City Gold fuel cell electric bus.
Since 2019, TME, has integrated Toyota’s fuel cell technology into the hydrogen city buses manufactured by CaetanoBus, supplying fuel cell stacks, hydrogen tanks and other key components. More recently, in December 2020, Toyota Caetano Portugal (TCAP) became the direct shareholder of CaetanoBus, to support rapid expansion from its core business to the development and sales of zero-emission buses.
During the past year, CaetanoBus has reinforced its international presence with a surge in sales of its zero-emission models throughout Europe. This reflects increasing recognition in the competitive European market of the company’s engineering capability and use of cutting-edge technology.
“With this co-branding, we are reinforcing the long-standing partnership with Toyota to the whole zero-emission buses business. This allows us both to demonstrate on the one hand technical capability and complementary technology, and the other a true alignment towards decarbonisation,” said José Ramos, Caetanobus President.
The H2.City Gold is a hydrogen-fuelled electric bus that uses Toyota’s fuel cell system. The city bus has a range of around 250 miles (400km) and can be refuelled in under nine minutes. The vehicle showcases the complementary technologies and engineering capabilities of both companies and represents the first step in the co-branding strategy, which also includes the e.City Gold all-electric bus.
Central to the co-branding is a change in the vehicles’ badging to include both the Caetano and Toyota logos, acknowledging the strong visual recognition Toyota has among European customers.
“The co-branding of CaetanoBus zero-emissions buses shows the confidence we have in our latest investment and our long-standing partnership with Caetano. It also underlines the importance that Toyota places on developing zero-emission mobility beyond cars, on our path to carbon neutrality,” said Matt Harrison, TME President and CEO.