Daimler's eCitaro gets its own electric platform and LFP batteries in 2028

Daimler Buses dropped the news at its eMobility Days 3.0 at the SAP Garden in Munich, where a near-production prototype took center stage in front of hundreds of international journalists and staff. From 2028, the Mercedes-Benz eCitaro will sit on a purpose-built electric platform instead of a converted combustion vehicle, use LFP battery cells for the first time and eventually cover some intercity routes. CEO Till Oberwörder laid out the strategy on site and sat down with electrive editor Cora Werwitzke.

The current eCitaro landed in 2018 with an electric drivetrain dropped into a conventional bus, a shortcut Oberwörder says has run its course. He told electrive the architecture has hit its technical limits, and a dedicated platform lets Daimler scale up and manage variants better while pushing customer total cost of ownership lower. Over roughly seven years the bus has cycled through four battery generations on NMC chemistry, each with reworked battery and thermal management.

LFP is the next step, and Oberwörder cites two reasons: a significantly longer service life and a cell chemistry that needs no cobalt. He frames the decision as a timing call rather than a price promise, saying every bus is configured individually and that lower TCO, not a lower sticker price, is the benchmark. Daimler is also parking the fuel-cell range extender for now, arguing its planned battery concepts cover almost all European city routes, though the platform would be ready for a fuel-cell version if customer demand holds up.

On Germany's e-bus subsidies, Oberwörder is arguing to keep them, pointing out the industry has only twelve years, from 2018 to 2030, to flip an entire segment from diesel to electric while operations keep running. He says the money is less about the vehicle and more about depots, grid connections and the wider ecosystem, and warns that cutting funding would strip operators of planning security. He calls the EU target of a 90 percent cut in CO2 from newly sold urban bus fleets by 2030, measured against 2019, demanding but achievable, provided the funding signal stays stable.

Internal Daimler Buses figures show EVs already made up two-thirds of new public transport bus registrations in Europe last year. Next up is the intercity segment, then the coach, which Oberwörder says will arrive by the end of the decade and which he has already seen, though he would not give a date. He describes a dual strategy of battery and hydrogen for longer routes, with group synergies in play, while charging arm Daimler Buses Solutions has notched up around 100 completed or commissioned depot projects in its three years.

Oberwörder's own roadmap starts with the city bus, where the battery dominates, and fans out from there. He says the transformation is moving far faster than the combustion era ever did, and that developers are responding with adaptability rather than pressure. Identifying when a technology is genuinely market-ready, he argues, is the manufacturer's real job.