Dancer, designed and manufactured by the Klaipėda-based Vėjo Projektai in cooperation with scientists from local and foreign universities, is an originally-constructed electric city bus which is also the lightest on the market. Its first prototype was manufactured by reconstructing a trolley-bus and attempting to improve technologies in order to create a vehicle which can be charged very quickly, has a unique design and the lowest possible net weight.
Two Dancer buses, certified and registered in 2019, have been operating on Klaipėda’s regular routes since spring 2020 with nearly 100,000 km completed by the end of the year.
“We are very proud that the first buses designed and manufactured by our company in Klaipėda are operating on the streets of this very city. Klaipėda’s openness to innovations in public transport and their readiness to replace the usual fossil-fuel-powered transport with electric busses is in line with the EU’s Green Deal. More importantly, the move towards e-transport will result in reduced air pollution and healthier living conditions for the city’s residents. We believe that electric buses will soon replace even more polluting vehicles not only in Klaipėda but also across other cities in Lithuania,” says Alvydas Naujėkas, CEO of Vėjo Projektai.
The first electric vehicle registered in 2021 is a new generation, improved bus, which later this year will be introduced in other cities of Lithuania as well as the Benelux countries and Germany.
The new Dancer is manufactured from a composite material which also includes recycled PET plastic. Due to its particularly light weight, the new e-bus requires less energy and can operate on smaller batteries, chargeable within less than ten minutes thanks to a unique pantograph technology.
While adapting the newest scientific discoveries, the Dancer’s technologies were developed by UAB Elektrinio Transporto Sistemos, part of the Vėjo Projektai group of companies, on the basis of the European Regional Development Fund’s 2014-2020 European Union investment action programme project Nr. J05-LVPA-K-03-0058 “Electrical city transport creation laboratory installation, modular electric city bus prototype creation and trial batch manufacturing.”
Both Vėjo Projektai and UAB Elektrinio Transporto Sistemos were the first Lithuanian enterprises to be granted the innovative company status by Lithuania’s Agency for Science, Innovation and Technology (MITA) in 2020. The status recognises the companies’ efforts in creating a unique product based on scientific discoveries. The e-bus Dancer, designed and manufactured within the territory of Klaipėda FEZ, also won the gold medal in the Vehicle, Mobility and Transportation Design category of the prestigious A’ Design 2020 awards.
