MUNICH: MAN Truck & Bus will introduce a major upgrade to its Lion’s City E electric city bus next year, centred on a home-grown lithium-ion battery that is lighter, stores more energy and is built at the company’s new plant in Nuremberg.
The packs, which use nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) chemistry tuned for heavy-duty use, will debut at the UITP public-transport summit in Hamburg and enter series production in the fourth quarter of 2025.
Output in Nuremberg is being ramped up to 50,000 packs a year.
Since the Lion’s City E went on sale in 2019 more than 2,500 examples have travelled 100 million emission-free kilometres across Europe, and in the first three months of 2025 the electric model accounted for over half of MAN’s European city-bus sales.
The range already covers 10-, 12- and 18-metre versions, a low-entry inter-urban model and the Lion’s Chassis E for overseas markets.
Higher energy density means operators can install fewer packs without losing range, freeing space for passengers and trimming running costs.
At launch, the 12-metre bus can be ordered with four or five packs (356kWh or 445kWh) and the 18-metre articulated variant with six or seven (534kWh or 623kWh); later six- and eight-pack options will be added, and the 10-metre model retains its four-pack 356kWh set-up.
The modular format still lets fleets tailor capacity precisely to daily duty cycles.
Two battery-usage strategies remain.
“Maximum Range” allows up to 90 per cent discharge for daily journeys of about 380 km, while “Reliable Range” starts at 65% discharge and gradually rises as the battery ages to guarantee roughly 270km over a 14-year, one-million-kilometre life.
Safety is overseen by a battery-management system that monitors every cell, isolates the pack in an accident and regulates temperature.
Up to 96% of each pack can be recycled, and MAN aims for battery-electric vehicles to make up 90% of its European bus deliveries by 2030, matching the growing number of zero-emission tenders from city operators.
