At this year’s ‘Global Technology Day’ – held at its test track on 27 June in Jeversen, to the north of Hanover – ZF Group’s CEO, Dr Holger Klein, observed that, while sales of fully electric cars are slowing down, hybrids are seeing “a renaissance”. Fittingly, ZF used the event to promote one of its latest innovations, a new hybrid drive system. During the rest of the day, however, we were taken onto the track to see how its advanced safety technologies from the passenger car segment are now being transferred to trucks.

The new facility, which is already in use, incorporates a test chamber and engine dynamometers with nominal capacities of 900 kilowatts and 4,000 Nm.

Somewhere in the industrial estate of a small city in western Poland, there is a charging station which was installed by me. The site of the installation was near the headquarters of Ekoenergetyka, the manufacturer of the charging station in question, and the hosts of a conference which brought together several hundred guests involved or interested in the development of Europe’s charging infrastructure. The event, organised by an industry association called CharIn, was the third such conference and “testival” to have taken place in Europe since 2023.

The Zemo Partnership has been formed to aid the new government in its plans to accelerate road transport decarbonisation. The Council will work closely with over 200 member organisations to develop a roadmap for net zero transport.

2023 saw the company planned to invest USD 530 million in the development of hydrogen technologies to create a complete hydrogen value chain from the production, distribution (storage tanks), consumption (hydrogen engines) and management (telematics) of green hydrogen at scale.

There was plenty to report from the 2024 edition of the Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo held at the Las Vegas Convention Center between May 20-23.

The companies announced that they had successfully tested their integrated electric drive system on a Class 7 demonstration vehicle at Eaton’s proving grounds in Marshall, Michigan.

In Toulouse it will carry out R&D on its so-called ‘SuperBattery’, a high-power battery which “bridges the gap between supercapacitors and batteries”, offering high capacity and energy intensity, faster charging and expanded charge and discharge cycles.

At the CV show, AEM showcased its HDSRM300 motor in Adgero’s retrofit kinetic energy recovery system (KERS) solution. Designed for truck operators, this system combines AEM electric motors with ultracapacitors and heavy-duty power electronics, offering a bolt-in retrofit solution to hybridise existing combustion vehicles.

There are several acres of parking for trailers, a 24,700-square-foot building with offices and workshops, a fuel station, truck weighing scales, and other facilities. 

Called ‘FFB PreFab’, the 6,450-square-metre building is an initial step towards building an even larger facility, the ‘FFB Fab’, for research into large-scale industrial methods of battery cell production.

Mats Harborn, president of Scania China Group, said he sees “tremendous potential” in China's economic transformation, adding that the country’s focus on technology and high-quality development will help foreign companies do business there in the long term.