Dancer Bus joins forces with Altas Auto

This week, the manufacturers of DANCER electric city buses Vėjo Projektai from Klaipeda FEZ and the Lithuanian automotive company Altas Auto producing medium and small class electric buses, signed a cooperation agreement that will help to better achieve common goals in both Lithuanian and foreign markets. By joining forces, the companies will also jointly make sales in EU markets.

Sharing engineering experience and representing the interests of sustainable transport at the national level are the main tasks of the alliance brought together by the two largest Lithuanian electric transport manufacturers, a joint press release states.

“The market for electric bus manufacturers in Europe is still in its infancy, so there is a great lack of common understanding and information for national and urban decision-makers about the opportunities and benefits of the new generation of electric urban transport. Together with “Dancer”, we are the leaders in engineering innovation in this field, so we will maintain an active dialogue with decision-makers and thus strive for faster growth in this field,” says Edvardas Radzevičius, the CEO of Altas Auto.

“Compared to large automotive corporations, we are a relatively small company, so only by joining forces can we be competitive,” says Alvydas Naujėkas, the General Manager of Vėjo Projektai. “We believe that the EU-wide political priority, mobilized financial resources to develop electric transport systems and the growing demand for electric buses will allow Lithuanian manufacturers to successfully establish themselves in European markets”.

Today, both Lithuanian electric bus manufacturers focus on different bus classes, so the combined sales forces will offer the customers a wider choice of vehicles – M2, M3 class city and intercity buses.

Companies’ executives hope that this cooperation will help ensure the competitiveness of Lithuanian vehicles in foreign markets, and we will see “Dancer” and “Altas Auto” buses in more and more European cities.

In European countries, the market for electric buses is growing extremely fast. Of the more than 5,000 large electric buses currently registered in Europe, more than 3,700 have been registered in the last two years.

However, the market is only gaining momentum, with 22% more electric buses registered last year alone than in 2019. Moreover, in the streets of European countries, almost 600,000 polluting diesel-powered public transport buses are still used and to be in line with the EU’s Green Deal efforts to reduce transport pollution, they should be replaced by clean ones in the next couple of decades.

The new agreement between Vėjo Projektai and Altas Auto will open opportunities to develop new electric transport engineering solutions, implement a joint sales strategy, have joint sales and vehicle service representatives in European countries, and participate in public procurement of state or municipal public transport companies.