There will not be a big handover event in three years, at which Designwerk will deliver all 26 vehicles in one go. Instead, the LOW CAB Collect 6x2R 450E waste collection vehicles from Designwerk will be handed over to the city once they have been completed, according to Designwerk. This should be the case for the 26th vehicle at the end of 2027.
However, there is no mention of when the first vehicle will be handed over to the city of Zurich. For now, Designwerk has won the corresponding tender. There were some challenges that went beyond the pure e-drive. For example, the city stipulated in the tender that the vehicles should have the shortest possible wheelbase in order to cope better in tight traffic. Designwerk was able to offer a vehicle with a wheelbase of just 3.45 meters – a “unique selling point” according to the company.
Despite the small wheelbase, Designwerk can install a battery capacity of 450 kilowatt hours in the LOW CAB Collect 6x2R 450E – as can be seen from the model name. The size of the battery was chosen with foresight: The 450 kWh should therefore be sufficient to ensure all-day operation in the cold season without intermediate charging even after ten years of use (with corresponding degradation).
The 26 refuse collection vehicles are each charged via two on-board chargers installed on the vehicle with a total charging capacity of 44 kilowatts (AC). This charges the batteries slowly overnight.
“Winning this tender confirms our technological leadership in commercial vehicles, which are not “off-the-shelf” and increasingly stand out from OEM series vehicles,” says Reto Schmid, Sales Manager E-LKW Europe South at Designwerk Technologies AG. “Thanks to our flexibility and our great depth of knowledge and production, we are able to meet the increasingly complex requirements placed on vehicles.”
The customer, the city of Zurich, committed to a more sustainable vehicle and transport policy back in 2008. For the Department of Waste Management + Recycling of the City of Zurich (ERZ), this means that the entire ERZ fleet is to be purely electrically powered by 2032. Zurich has already relied on Designwerk as a partner for electrification in the past. The first vehicle for ERZ was handed over in 2020, followed by ten more fully electric waste collection vehicles with low-floor cabs in 2023.