 | | | The Mercedes-Benz Citaro breaks all records |
The 20,000th Mercedes-Benz Citaro was has been produced in Mannheim. Michael Göpfarth, manager of the Mercedes-Benz Bus and Coach Unit of EvoBus GmbH, presented the milestone vehicle to Hermann Pflieger, owner of Pflieger Reise- und Verkehrs GmbH in Böblingen, Germany. The company runs two dozen bus lines within the Böblingen-Sindelfingen transportation system (Stadtverkehr Böblingen-Sindelfingen, SBS), part of the Stuttgart public transportation network (Verkehrs- und Tarifverbund Stuttgart, VVS), and employs more than 120 staff. With around 90 buses, many of which are Mercedes-Benz Citaros, the 82-year-old company operates buses both for city lines and touring and occasional transport.
The Mercedes-Benz Citaro achieves one success after another. It’s reached the impressive figure of 20,000 vehicles in just ten years of production, an amazing feat for a city bus. In the record year of 2007 alone, almost 3,200 units were sold. Since production began in 1997/1998, the city bus family of originally two to twelve basic models has been continually expanded. Updated on an ongoing basis and on the market in the second generation for two years now, the state-of-the-art Citaro continues to set the standard in safety, comfort and environmental friendliness today as it has done from the start.
The design, comfort and engineering of the Citaro are groundbreaking, from the driver’s seat to the engine. Environmentally safe powertrain engineering with BlueTec® diesel technology based on SCR (selective catalytic reduction) technology fulfils the emissions level in accordance with Euro 4 and the future Euro 5 as well as the EEV (enhanced environmentally friendly vehicle) requirements. Low exhaust and noise emissions and environmentally safe production were also reasons why the Citaro with natural gas drive received the "Blue Angel" environmental seal in 2003 and the Citaro with diesel drive was granted the same honour in 2007.
The success of the Mercedes-Benz Citaro today provides a guideline for its rival products. This is due in part to the market-driven design of the vehicle programme, which is continually adjusted to customers’ needs. The modular construction of the Citaro enables a high degree of flexibility in the manufacturing process, which not only allows for various drive systems, but also provides the basis for many special versions and special bodies. That’s why the large capacity bus CapaCity was developed to serve as an innovative solution for transportation challenges in fast-growing cities.
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