Russia's second largest city is now following suit with Moscow and placing its trust on a large-scale in advanced driveline and chassis technology from ZF, as well as steering systems from ZF Lenksysteme GmbH, for its buses.
The technology group's modern commercial vehicle components will provide for lower fuel consumption, greater efficiency, and significantly improved passenger comfort in 282 new vehicles destined for Saint Petersburg.
As a result, the fuel-saving and quiet automatic transmission, ZF-EcoLife, will be used in large quantities for the first time in buses produced by the Russian manufacturers LiAZ and Volgabus.
"All over Russia, numerous municipal transportation services are working intensively on modernizing their bus fleets - this includes deploying advanced driveline and chassis technology which they are ordering more and more frequently from ZF", says Rolf Lutz, member of the board of management responsible for the commercial vehicle technology division. "This is confirmed by the new major order from Saint Petersburg, which we are particularly pleased about. With this, EcoLife, currently our most advanced bus transmission, will eventually also be installed for the first time on a large scale in vehicles produced by local Russian manufacturers - more precisely in 183 solobuses from LiAZ and 99 articulated buses from Volgabus". In total, there are more than 500 buses with ZF automatic transmissions on the road in Saint Petersburg.
The Saint Petersburg bus fleet is also going to be used at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sotschi - supplemented by a further 100 vehicles which will also be equipped with modern transmission systems from ZF. The current order is concurrently the second major bus order from Russia for ZF this year: First, the technology company received an order for driveline and chassis technology for 565 public transport vehicles from the Moscow public transport authority, Mosgortrans.
