In the article before last, we looked at high-voltage vehicles – electric buses to be precise – in Hamburg’s transport system. The following question was posed to us in this regard:

“Does a bus driver [der einen Elektrobus fährt] also haveto take high-voltage training?”

For the delimitation of the necessary qualifications, it should be clarified in advance: The Hamburg bus drivers have to drive the buses and neither drive them as test vehicles nor build them in production, they have to drive intrinsically safe vehicles as series vehicles on the road. More stringent qualification measures for (ev) high voltage are required for pre-production vehicles. So let’s stay with the (ev ) high voltage production vehicles. For this purpose the DGUV Information 200-005 in Chapter V No. 1: “Employees must be made aware of the vehicle-specific characteristics of HV (ev) vehicles and familiarized with their intended use. For the operation of HV (ev) vehicles, it is sufficient to instruct the employees on the special features to be observed.” It is therefore primarily a matter of work-related instruction. Of course, this also requires a basic understanding of the technology, but no extensive qualification in the electrotechnical sense is necessary. The situation is different, however, for work on the vehicle, such as changing wheels, working on the brakes, etc. For this – even if it is non-electrical work – a basic qualification is necessary.
So if a company is thinking about assigning its drivers more tasks around the high-voltage vehicle, even in an emergency, high-voltage training is also important for bus drivers of electric buses.