Cremona, Italy – October 15th, 2025 – Arriva Italy and Bia, the smart charging platform for electric fleets, are celebrating one year of collaboration driving the electrification of public transport in Cremona. The partnership is helping Arriva achieve one of the highest rates of successful electric bus charging sessions in the country, over 95% of transactions finish with a state of charge above 90%.
Bia’s energy optimization platform currently delivers an average of 70 MWh per month to Arriva’s fleet of 31 electric buses across 12 chargers, ensuring buses are ready for service while minimizing costs and infrastructure strain.
A key feature of the deployment is Bia’s priority balancer, which orchestrates charging while respecting the contracted power limit of the site’s main meter and the capacity of two transformers, each feeding six chargers. In addition, Bia takes into account Arriva’s charging shifts and operational schedules, ensuring that every bus reaches the required state of charge before its next departure.
To further optimize energy use, Bia integrates day-ahead spot prices from the Italian electricity market operator GME (Gestore del Mercato Elettrico), allowing Arriva to charge at the most cost-efficient times of day. This smart charging strategy is expected to deliver around 20% savings through price arbitrage.
Currently, Bia’s optimization has already reduced the depot’s peak load by approximately 45%, avoiding costly demand charges and generating significant monthly savings.
Together, these measures allowed Arriva Italy to achieve a return on investment in under three months.
“In 2022 we launched in Cremona an ambitious project to progressively modernize the urban
fleet, with the goal of replacing diesel vehicles with electric buses. Thanks to this initiative,
Cremona’s urban fleet today includes 31 electric vehicles and, by early 2026, with the
introduction of the last three small-size buses, Cremona will be among the first cities in Italy
to operate a fully electric urban bus service. Through the collaboration with Bia, we can rely
on a smart charging system that ensures service reliability, reduces energy costs, and
minimizes grid impact, providing the city with a modern, clean, and sustainable public
transport system.” said Angelo Costa, Arriva Italia Managing Director.
“Arriva Italy is setting a benchmark for e-bus operations in Cremona,” said Roby Moyano, Head of Product at Bia. “By combining charge optimization algorithms, power limit compliance, and electricity price signals, we’ve created a system that maximizes fleet uptime while reducing costs and grid impact.”
This collaboration is a key step in Arriva’s commitment to sustainable mobility and aligns with Cremona’s efforts to reduce emissions and improve urban air quality.
