MAN Lion’s City E gets a design prize at the Automotive Brand Contest
Following on from the 2020 iF Design Award, the electric bus MAN Lion’s City E has now achieved a new victory: the jury of the Automotive Brand Contest awarded MAN’s creation the design prize in the Commercial Vehicle category. Also the Ebusco 3.0 has been crowned at the same competition. Automotive Brand Contest, a prize to […]
Following on from the 2020 iF Design Award, the electric bus MAN Lion’s City E has now achieved a new victory: the jury of the Automotive Brand Contest awarded MAN’s creation the design prize in the Commercial Vehicle category. Also the Ebusco 3.0 has been crowned at the same competition.
Automotive Brand Contest, a prize to MAN Lion’s City E
In its Automotive Brand Contest, the German Design Council (Rat für Formgebung) awards prizes every year in recognition of exceptional product and communications design. The jury comprising journalists, design and communications experts and academics presents the awards in a total of 13 categories and four special categories. The MAN Lion’s City E won the coveted award in the Commercial Vehicle category.
“The Automotive Brand Contest is the only neutral international design competition for automotive brands, so the competition is tough. That makes it all the more pleasing to us that the MAN Lion’s City E won,” says Rudi Kuchta, Head Business Unit Bus at MAN Truck & Bus. He goes on: “The award shows how well the design of our electric bus has been received. Behind it all is a highly motivated team that has done a great job over the past few years. It’s something to be really proud of.”
“The entire exterior is segmented. The colour, trim and lighting concept imbues the disabled-accessible interior with a bright and spacious feel. The ergonomically styled driver’s cockpit incorporates impressively high levels of functionality,” the jury’s verdict states.
An e-mobility design
One of the winning features of the MAN Lion’s City E was its timelessly modern and expressive look. “Our designers took the consistently well thought-out concept of the new city bus generation and developed it into a ground-breaking e-mobility design. What has emerged is an electric bus that has a design all of its own, yet is immediately recognisable as a member of the new MAN Lion’s City family,” comments Stephan Schönherr, Vice President Styling Bus, and the man responsible for bus design for the MAN and NEOPLAN brands.
He adds: “This latest award in the Automotive Brand Contest, and many other prizes including the 2020 iF Design Award, impressively affirm the great work done by our team. They also underline our basic idea that buses designed for the urban transport needs of today and tomorrow must also look attractive.”
MAN Lion’s City 18 E, demo fleet in two cities
In December 2019, in Hamburg, MAN Truck & Bus delivered the first two 12-metre electric buses to the transport operators Hamburger Hochbahn and Verkehrsbetriebe Hamburg-Holstein for everyday use in the Hanseatic port city. VHH has also landed the first commercial order for the electric bus by MAN, with a contract for 17 vehicles.
13 demo vehicles (with 12-meter length) will be deployed in practice as part of the e-mobility roadmap. Over the course of 2020, the demo fleet of 15 electric buses in total will then be running customers’ services in five European countries(Germany, Spain, Luxembourg, Belgium, France).
As part of this testing programme, MAN will also hand over the 18-metre electric bus MAN Lion’s City 18 E to the transport operators Kölner Verkehrs-Betriebe AG (KVB) in Cologne and Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) in Spain, in order to conduct the planned practical testing there, too.
