It has convinced many city councils with a model that has generated a turnover of 780 million euros in orders.
By Laura King
The Irizar ie tram crosses the promenade of Playa de la Concha en San Sebastián.
The mobility of the cities of the future involves the electrification of the mobile fleet and the development of autonomous vehicles, capable of circulating practically without human intervention.
The success of many of the initiatives of this type that seek to transform cities in Spain depends on the distribution of Next Generation funds , the mechanism devised in 2020 for the economic recovery of the European Union.
One of the projects that aspires to benefit from this financing is the one presented a few months ago by the Zaragoza City Council, a new model of urban bus that is like a tram, but with wheels.
A project that, according to El Periódico de Aragón , involves the purchase of 68 zero-polluting vehicles: they are electric, very quiet, do not have rear-view mirrors and have safety systems that prevent accidents.
This is the ie-tram, a bus with tram aesthetics and a maximum capacity of 155 people, which seems to have seduced many municipal governments in Spain, which plan to place it on their streets in the coming years or have already done so: Madrid, San Sebastián, León, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca and Zaragoza, among others, will see how surface public transport in their cities changes.
The person responsible for the manufacture of this “bus of the future” is the Basque firm Irizar, a company that was born as a family business in 1889 by José Antonio Irizar and which, according to its website , has become one of the main electric and hydrogen bus manufacturers in the world.
In the beginning, Irizar dedicated itself to the manufacture of carriages. In 1928, he manufactured what would be his first coach, a vehicle with mechanical traction and 22 seats, which also marked the beginning of his expansion into the passenger transport market. In 1933, he designed the first wooden-bodied bus and in 1953, the first all-metal bus.
Parallel to the evolution of vehicles, the structure of the company was taking shape: in 1960 it became a Public Limited Company and in 1963 it was transformed into a cooperative until it is, today, a benchmark in the passenger transport sector capable of billing 780 million euros with the orders for the bus-tram it has received until the second half of 2024, according to El Economista.
Today, Irizar is a global company with a presence in more than 60 countries. The company has more than 3,000 employees and has production plants in Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Morocco, South Africa and India.
