FIAA 2022 will host an intense agenda of activities

At the end of the Press Conference, at 2 pm, the prestigious MINIBUS of the YEAR European Awards will be presented, which recognise the technological efforts of the bus industry.

On the same day -18 October- at 10.30 am, the company E-RESCUE will hold a demonstration in the Avenue between Halls 5 and 6, with its technological advances for accidents, in which the fire service and police with participate. Specifically, an injured person will be removed from a bus crash, to demonstrate their evacuation system for injured people. For this demonstration, there will be a bus provided by the exhibitor, as well as 2 fire engines, a Guardia Civil vehicle and an ambulance.

On Wednesday, 19 October, there will be a round table on “The efficient and profitable maintenance of bus and coach fleets”. How important is efficient management and maintenance of vehicles for the profitability of the bus and coach fleets? This is the question that will be answered at the conference organised by the Aftermarket VI Club (an organisation made up of forty companies from the industrial vehicle spare parts and maintenance sector).

The meeting will open with the presentation of an unprecedented study on the dimensions of the bus and coach maintenance and repair market in Spain, led by Enrique Gómez, specialist consultant in automotive after sales and collaborator in the Aftermarket VI Club. Some of the question that will be answered by the report include: How many bus and coach garages are there in Spain?, How many belong to the fleets themselves? and How much is the bus and coach aftermarket worth?

Next, there will be a round table with participants from different types of bus and coach fleets (large, medium and small; public and private; exclusively for buses and coaches and mixed) where the importance of efficient management of maintenance for fleet profitability will be analysed.

The impact the pandemic and the economic crisis has had on passenger transport has also been noted in the companies which work in the maintenance and repair of buses and coaches. With the progressive recovery of mobility and, in the context of a vehicle fleet that is well into its old age, workshops and spare parts suppliers are also recovering their levels of activity and improving their service offer to bus and coach fleets, with or without their own workshops.

On the morning of 20 October, ITS will host a series of conferences in which new technologies in public transport will be discussed, led by heads of public transport companies and institutions; as well as transport professionals. Specifically, under the heading “ITS in Public Transport: from EMV to ABT”, it will address the current deployment of EMV technology in Public Transport in Spain; the new use of account-based ticketing, as well as its application for the interoperability in the MaaS environment.

The same day, Thursday 20 October, the UITP, International Association of Public Transport, together with EMT officials will host a series of closed-door meetings at FIAA on the JIVE and CBEP initiatives, along with other professionals involved in these initiatives. At the end of these meetings a guided tour of FIAA will be given where they can meet the exhibitors.

The H2020 project JIVE (Joint Initiative for hydrogen Vehicles across Europe) aims to advance the commercialisation of fuel cell buses through the large-scale deployment of vehicles and infrastructure. The first JIVE initiative was launched in 2017, and JIVE2 began running in parallel in January 2018. Both initiatives are coordinated by Element Energy Limited.  The aim of the JIVE projects is to guarantee that fuel cell buses are commercially viable so bus operators include them in their fleets without subsidies, and that local and national governments feel able to regulate the propulsion of zero emissions for their public transport systems. Taken together, the JIVE projects will deploy almost 300 fuel cell buses in 222 cities throughout Europe at the beginning of the 2020s, the largest rollout in Europe to date.

The Clean Bus Europe Platform is an initiative within the European Commission's Clean Bus Deployment Initiative which aims to support the rollout of clean bus technologies in Spain. Led by the UITP, the Platform brings together European cities, transport authorities and operators, together with relevant stakeholders like social dialogue partners, industry,

financing and funding institutions, associations, etc. to boost and support the exchange of knowledge and expertise on clean bus deployment.

The Clean Bus Deployment Initiative was launched by the European Commission in 2017 to support the transition to cleaner transport. Through their combined efforts, signatories of the Initiative are committed to make this transition happen. The Platform will make sure that a critical mass of cities and operators start and continue investing in clean bus technologies, thus creating a powerful momentum for a wider and unstoppable clean bus deployment across Europe.

On 21 October a workshop on the “New ZF solutions for passenger public transport”, in which topics such as “The new CVS division of ZF and its wide range of products for buses and cars”, and “The new EcoLife Coachline Transmission System”, both led by Ulrich Klein, of ZF Friedrichshafen AG, Germany; ‘The connectivity solution with more product packages and extensive integration possibilities” by Jorge Franquet, of ZF Services España, and “Autonomous Transport Systems by ZF” (David Espejo, also of ZF Services España).

Also on the 21st the International Union of Public Transport UITP, in collaboration with the OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) of certain brands of the bus sector will carry out a guided tour in a series of companies to discover the status of the industry in the market, the latest innovations, new products, when new models will be launches, new technologies or services they are going to implement, etc.

In addition to all these activities in Hall 9, in this edition product testing will play a very important role, as a space will be provided outside Hall 9, where, during the four days of the Fair, interested professional visitors can test buses from the brands which interest them the most. In order to do so, they should go to the stand of the brand of bus they are interested in and ask for a product test.

Professional registration for FIAA is now open, get your free pass until 17 October inclusive. Come and find out about all the new innovations and be part of the biggest meeting of the Bus and Coach sector. Get your pass here