Ballard Power Systems has announced its Mercedes-Benz Citaro fuel cell buses will be operating in Europe for a further year.

The Canadian company, which provides the fuel cells for the 27 buses, says it has been granted a extension to a Europe wide project that will net the firm around £4.7 million.

The CUTE (Clean Urban Transport for Europe) and ECTOS (Ecological City Transport System) project has proved a success in a number of European cities, such as Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona and London, where three of the buses run.

Noordin Nanji, the firm's vice president of marketing and business development, said: "The lifetime of the fuel cells far exceeded our customers' expectations, with extremely high reliability and several fuel cell stacks continuing to run after 3,000 hours of operation.

"We've fed what we have learned back into Ballard's next generation automotive fuel cell technology and product development", he added.

It is hoped the extra year of operation will provide the firm with information on how the vehicles operate under different terrains and conditions.

Hamburg is upping its quota of the buses from three to nine, making it the world's largest fleet of fuel cell buses run by a single transport company.

Ÿ Adfero Ltd