Solaris Urbino 12 electric

Overview and generations

The Urbino 12 electric is a two-axle, low-floor city bus. Solaris says the model was launched in 2011 and, in a press release of 5 March 2024, that by then 1,500 had been built, that it served over 120 towns and cities in Europe, and that it was the first ever electric vehicle to be awarded the “Bus of the Year 2017” title — all four the company’s own claims, the last a superlative checked against no source outside Solaris.

Solaris puts short technical data sheets for the model into its press assets as open PDFs, carrying dimensions, overhangs, gross vehicle weight, door arrangement and seat counts. There is more than one sheet, issued at different shows over the model’s life, and they describe different specifications rather than reprinting one.

The current version, shown at Mobility Move in Berlin in March 2024 and later given the Sustainable Bus Award in the urban category, drops the engine tower altogether: Solaris describes a modular drive system with the components placed on the roof and at the rear. Forgoing the engine tower, the March 2024 release says, made it possible to arrange those components on the roof more effectively and to enhance the passenger compartment; the release puts the new version at up to 41 seats, seven more than the previous version. The figures for the current version come from a different document than the press release: the press release of 5 March 2024 gives no motor power and no axle description, both of which are on the sheet for the Urbino 12 electric with modular drive filed with Solaris’s Busworld 2025 press release of 3 October 2025. Whether the bus standing in Berlin in March 2024 was to the specification on that later sheet, neither document says.

The earlier sheets describe different machines. The InnoTrans and Stockholm 2019 sheets give a ZF AVE 130 drive axle with integrated electric motors and 240 kWh of battery; the Stockholm 2019 sheet states the motors as 125 kW each and gives 28 seats, while the InnoTrans sheet states no motor power and gives 28+2 seats. The Transexpo 2022 sheet keeps the ZF AVE 130 and raises the battery to over 500 kWh, with 26 seats; the UITP 2023 sheet gives a ZF CeTrax motor of 220 kW driving a ZF AV 133 axle, with a 420 kWh battery and 21 seats. The Busworld 2025 sheet for the modular-drive version gives a central 240 kW motor, a portal drive axle, a 600 kWh battery and up to 41 seats. The sheets give different drives, different battery capacities and different seat counts under one model name across the years.

Doors, seats and the low floor

Solaris counts total capacity as standing and seated passengers together. The Busworld 2025 sheet gives a maximum of 35 seats, up to 41 in option, of which 14 are reachable from the low floor, up to 16 in option, and a maximum passenger capacity of up to 100. The March 2024 release footnotes the 100 figure as the maximum in Italy, France and Spain, for 300 kWh batteries, with 94 the maximum “pursuant to European provisions” — see the weight section below. The UITP 2023 sheet gave 21 seats and up to 77 passengers; the Stockholm 2019 sheet gave 28 seats and 75 passengers.

The door arrangement on the Busworld 2025 sheet is 2-2-2, and that notation is all the sheet prints. No Solaris document opened names the vehicle’s class under UN Regulation No 107. Paragraph 2.1.1.1 defines Class I as vehicles constructed with areas for standing passengers, to allow frequent passenger movement. Annex 3 paragraph 7.6.1.1 sets a minimum of three service doors for a Class I vehicle carrying 71 to 100 passengers, and paragraph 7.6.1.6 provides that a double service door “shall count as two doors”.

Low floor is a defined term. Paragraph 2.1.4 makes a low-floor vehicle one of Class I, II or A in which at least 35 per cent of the area available for standing passengers forms an area without steps and includes access to at least one service door — the whole of the definition for a single-deck rigid bus. Step heights, ramp geometry and the wheelchair space attach to the class instead: paragraph 5.2 makes Annex 8 compulsory for Class I vehicles, and paragraph 5.3 leaves Contracting Parties “free to choose” for the other classes, though features or devices for people with reduced mobility fitted to them “shall comply with the relevant requirements of Annex 8”. One thing low-floor status does change is the means: Annex 8 paragraph 3.1 says that “In low floor vehicles only a kneeling system, but not a retractable step, may be engaged” to reach the step figures. That definition, and the difference between low-floor and low-entry, is in bus accessibility.

The Busworld 2025 sheet lists the bus as “R66 Compliant” without naming the approval route; which buses UN R66 reaches is covered in UN R66 rollover strength.

Motor

The Busworld 2025 sheet for the modular-drive version lists a central electric motor of 240 kW, described as part of a modular drive using SiC (silicon carbide) technology. Whether the bus shown at Mobility Move in March 2024 was to that specification, neither document says.

The earlier sheets give different motors. The UITP 2023 sheet gives a ZF CeTrax of 220 kW; its entry reads “Engine, ZF CeTrax 220 kW” and does not say where the motor sits. The Stockholm 2019 sheet gives a ZF AVE 130 drive axle with two electric motors integrated in it, 125 kW each; the InnoTrans sheet gives the same drive axle with electric motors integrated in it but states no power figure for them. No Solaris document opened gives a continuous/peak split for any of these figures.

Transmission and drive axles

The current version’s drive is described by Solaris as modular, with the components — motor, power electronics and battery — placed on the roof and at the rear rather than in an engine tower. The Busworld 2025 sheet lists an independent front axle with a stabiliser and, at the rear, a portal drive axle, also with a stabiliser. Solaris does not say what the portal axle does for the floor. Annex VII, paragraph 2(2) of Regulation (EU) 2017/2400 defines a single portal axle as one that “has typically a vertical offset” between the rotating axis of the crown gear and that of the wheel, due to the demand of a higher ground clearance or a lowered floor to allow a low floor concept for inner city buses — but paragraph 2 opens by confining its definitions to the purposes of that Annex. It is the vocabulary of one CO2 certification procedure, describing a type of axle rather than this bus, not a general definition of an axle in European law, as axle ratios and final drive sets out.

The earlier sheets describe different axles. The Stockholm 2019, InnoTrans and Transexpo 2022 sheets give a ZF AVE 130 drive axle with the motors integrated in it. The UITP 2023 sheet gives a ZF AV 133 inverted drive axle at the rear and a ZF RL 82 EC independent axle at the front.

Solaris prints no wheel formula on any sheet opened. The 4x2 in the overview above is not Solaris’s notation; the sheet lists exactly two axles, one of them driven. What the notation counts is covered in axle configurations.

Dimensions and weights

The Busworld 2025 sheet for the modular-drive version gives a length of 12,000 mm, a width of 2,550 mm and a height of 3,250 mm, with a wheelbase of 5,900 mm, a front overhang of 2,700 mm and a rear overhang of 3,400 mm. The UITP 2023 sheet gives a height of 3,300 mm, rising to 3,480 mm with the pantograph fitted.

The Busworld 2025 sheet gives a gross vehicle weight of 19,500 kg, “up to 20,000 kg depending on country and tires”. Solaris’s own press release of 5 March 2024 ties the two figures to passengers in a footnote: 100 people is the maximum passenger capacity in Italy, France and Spain, giving a gross vehicle weight of 20,000 kg; 94 people is the maximum “pursuant to European provisions”, giving 19,500 kg. In that footnote the passenger figure and the gross vehicle weight move together; it does not mention tyres.

The 19,500 kg matches the figure Directive 96/53/EC sets for a two-axle bus; the footnote does not name its European provisions. Annex I point 2.3.1 gives two-axle buses 19.5 tonnes and attaches nothing to that figure. The uplifts in the same point are worded differently: up to 1 tonne for “two-axle alternatively fuelled motor vehicles other than buses”, and up to 2 tonnes for zero-emission vehicles on “the maximum authorised weight of 18 tonnes” — the figure the point gives to two-axle motor vehicles other than buses, though the zero-emission row does not itself say “other than buses”. Whether that row reaches a zero-emission two-axle bus, point 2.3.1 does not spell out. Point 2.4 gives the three-axle articulated bus its own version of both uplifts. Nor is the ceiling the same in every case. Article 3(1) bars a Member State from refusing another Member State’s vehicle in international traffic for reasons relating to its weights and dimensions, “provided that such vehicles comply with the limit values specified in Annex I”; Article 4(1)(b) holds vehicles for national passenger transport to Annex I points 1.1, 1.2, 1.4a, 1.5 and 1.5a, all of them dimensions; and under Article 4(2)(b) Member States “may nonetheless authorise” national passenger vehicles that do not conform to points 1.3, 2, 3, 4.1 and 4.3, point 2 being the weights. Solaris does not say what its 20,000 kg in Italy, France and Spain rests on; Article 4(2)(b) is one route the Directive leaves open, and whether the figure rests on it or on anything else, no document opened says. How weights and dimensions bind differently is set out in bus classes.

There is a second qualification in the same footnote that the data sheet does not repeat. Both capacity figures are quoted for 300 kWh batteries, not for the over-600 kWh configuration the same release headlines. The Busworld 2025 sheet nonetheless prints up to 100 passengers alongside its 600 kWh battery line.

Battery and charging

Solaris frames the headline battery figure two ways. The Busworld 2025 sheet prints a flat number: Solaris High Energy, 600 kWh. The press release of 5 March 2024 says the bus showcased at the fair carries six batteries mounted on the roof with a total capacity of over 600 kWh, and the current product page says the same of the bus it describes. The overview grid reads 600 kWh, the sheet’s figure. None of the three carries a second number for usable energy. That row is blank because Solaris does not fill it.

The figure moves from sheet to sheet, and not in a straight line: 240 kWh on the InnoTrans and Stockholm 2019 sheets, over 500 kWh at Transexpo in 2022, 420 kWh on the UITP 2023 sheet, 600 kWh on the Busworld 2025 sheet. For the modular-drive version Solaris says it offers carriers different configurations of battery capacity, all roof-mounted.

Solaris gives range only as a floor, and only for the six-battery bus: the press release says “this configuration guarantees ranges of over 600 km”, footnoted as based on the energy consumption in SORT 2 tests, and the product page repeats it.

The Busworld 2025 sheet gives the charging method and no power for it: plug-in, with a pantograph in option. Solaris’s product page expands on the hardware without adding figures — a standard or an inverted pantograph above the first axle, and plug-in charging above the first axle on either side, at the front or at the rear. How a battery-electric city bus is built and charged is explained in electric buses explained.

The kilowatt ratings on the sheets opened belong to earlier vehicles and are quoted here as theirs. The UITP 2023 sheet gives plug-in charging up to 260 kW and pantograph charging up to 450 kW on a bus with 420 kWh of battery. The Transexpo 2022 sheet gives plug-in up to 240 kW. The Stockholm 2019 sheet gives plug-in charging with an on-board charger of 34 kW.

Safety and driver-assistance systems

The Busworld 2025 sheet declares the bus GSR2 compliant and R66 compliant. The sheet names no instrument; GSR2 is the usual name for Regulation (EU) 2019/2144. Article 18(1) of that Regulation repealed Regulation (EC) No 661/2009, among others, with effect from its date of application, 6 July 2022 — a later generation of the instrument, not a later stage within one, and not one gate either. Under Article 16, from the dates in Annex II and on grounds relating to the requirement concerned, national authorities “shall” refuse type-approval to a new type that does not comply, consider certificates of conformity for new vehicles that do not comply no longer valid and prohibit their registration, and prohibit the placing on the market or entry into service of non-compliant components and separate technical units. The dates differ system by system, which is why mandatory driver assistance systems runs to four timetables. The sheet lists intelligent speed assistance and blind spot information among the solutions included in mandatory GSR2, and lane departure warning among its additional systems. Annex II attaches to the lane departure warning row a note exempting vehicles of categories M2 and M3 of Class A, Class I and Class II as defined in UN Regulation No 107; that would account for the sheet’s split only if this bus holds one of those classes, which no Solaris document states.

Source notes

The figures above are the Busworld 2025 sheet for the modular-drive version: a central 240 kW motor, a modular drive using SiC technology, an independent front axle and a portal drive axle both with stabiliser — the sheet names no axle make and no model number, only those types — Solaris High Energy batteries of 600 kWh, front overhang 2,700 mm and rear overhang 3,400 mm, charging plug-in with a pantograph in option, 14 of the seats reachable from the low floor (up to 16 in option), and a gross vehicle weight of 19,500 kg, up to 20,000 kg depending on country and tyres. The earlier sheets are different vehicles. The UITP 2023 sheet gives a ZF CeTrax drive of 220 kW — its entry reads Engine, ZF CeTrax 220 kW, and does not say where the motor sits — a ZF AV 133 inverted drive axle and a ZF RL 82 EC independent front axle, batteries of 420 kWh, plug-in charging up to 260 kW and pantograph charging up to 450 kW, 21 seats, up to 77 passengers, 20,000 kg gross and a height of 3,300 mm rising to 3,480 mm with the pantograph. The Stockholm 2019 sheet gives a ZF AVE 130 drive axle with two integrated motors of 125 kW each, batteries of 240 kWh, an on-board charger of 34 kW, 28 seats, 75 passengers and 18,745 kg gross. The Transexpo 2022 sheet keeps the ZF AVE 130 and the 18,745 kg but raises the batteries to over 500 kWh and gives plug-in charging up to 240 kW, with 26 seats and 60 passengers. Range is quoted by Solaris only for the six-battery configuration, as over 600 km based on the energy consumption in SORT 2 tests. The capacity figures carry a footnote the data sheet omits: the press release of 5 March 2024 gives up to 100 people as the maximum in Italy, France and Spain at a gross weight of 20 tonnes and 94 people under European provisions at 19.5 tonnes, both for a 300 kWh battery rather than for the 600 kWh configuration the same documents headline. Solaris prints no wheel formula; the 4x2 above is not Solaris’s notation, and the sheet lists exactly two axles, one of them driven. The battery headline is framed twice: the Busworld 2025 sheet prints a flat “Solaris High Energy, 600 kWh”, while the press release of 5 March 2024 describes the bus shown at Mobility Move, and the current product page the bus it presents, as carrying six batteries mounted on the roof with a total capacity of over 600 kWh. The installed figure above is the sheet’s. The same sheet declares the bus GSR2 compliant and R66 compliant, and states no UN Regulation No 107 class; no other Solaris document opened states one either. Solaris stated in March 2024 that the model was launched in 2011, that 1,500 had been built, that it served over 120 towns and cities in Europe, and that it was the first ever electric vehicle to be awarded the Bus of the Year 2017 title — that last a company superlative, recorded as Solaris’s claim and not checked against any source outside Solaris.