A contract has been signed with the North Macedonia Free Zones Authority (TIDZ), which has helped with finding suitable land and tax incentives and which is expected to see more than 60 production lines be built by 2028.

ADL announced that the Plaxton (Panther & Leopard) coaches are to be built on the Volvo B8R chassis with a choice of I-Shift (automated manual) and automatic transmissions. These coaches are set to be built at ADL’s Scarborough plant, which ADL says, “benefits from a flexible set-up that allows lines to be switched between coach and bus production.”

The XB and XB Electric are set to replace the LF and LF Electric, with the XB Electric expected to go into series production in week 45, 2023, in Eindhoven.

The company has remained tight-lipped regarding any product specifications, but technicians and sales representatives will be on hand (stand 653B in Hall 6) to share information at the event.

At stand 629 in hall 6, the company is set to debut its new roof-mounted AC138 EVO air conditioning system which is set to go into series production in Q1 2025.

Hino Motors USA has appointed Davey Jung to the position of President, CEO and Chairman of the Board effective immediately. Jung succeeds outgoing President, Masamichi Mizukoshi who is retiring.

TraXon unit number 1,000,000 rolled off the production line at the company’s headquarters on 11 September, only eighteen months after ZF surpassed 500,000 units.

The IE-Drive 100 hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) utilises the company’s “patented evaporatively cooled (EC) technology”, whilst the hydrogen fuel cell stack delivers 155kW of power. In terms of the architecture, the design is centred around ‘blending’ the desired performance with the space constraints of LCVs. IE stated the HFC is currently being tested with various UK partners.

MCV will produce the buses under licence at its facility in Egypt, employing chassis supplied from Volvo’s factories in Sweden.

Following the framework sale of the e-Jest electric shuttle bus in the right-hand drive market in Japan earlier this year - Karsan is now exploring entry into the UK market with first deliveries planned for 2024.

Speaking with Deniz Cetin, Chief Commercial Officer at Karsan Automotive & Board Member at Group Companies at Cenex (2023), T&BB was informed that Karsan has bid on autonomous electric bus contracts (tenders) in Spain, Israel, Qatar and Canada. Deniz confirmed that Karsan recently delivered an autonomous bus to Istanbul which comes off the back of two successful autonomous bus trials in Norway and the USA.

The Ghent factory is assembling battery electric versions of the heavy-duty FH, FM, and FMX ranges on the same production line as the diesel and natural gas ones.