The slower-than-expected transition to electric vehicles is one of the main factors behind the decision to restructure the business, though Northvolt’s CEO and co-founder, Peter Carlsson, said, “there remains no question that the global transition towards electrification — and the long-term outlook for cell manufacturers, including Northvolt — is strong”.

The proof-of-concept vehicle was assembled, deployed and tested at the MIRA Technology Park in Nuneaton, UK. The prototype is expected to be tested by operators and OEMs during the rest of 2024.

The new R&D facility is located in Pune, Maharashtra, near a major production site where SAF-Holland manufactures trailer axles and suspensions under the ‘York’ brand.

The new lab verifies and validates software feature functionality for trucks and buses that not only meet current safety standards, but also helps Daimler Truck products manufactured products meeting future global safety regulations.

The company has been testing a hydrogen-powered engine in a Mercedes-Benz Unimog with the long-term aim of developing, at scale, hydrogen combustion engines for heavy-duty and specialised vehicles.

This deal will create significant revenues for Ceres through licensing fees, royalty payments, engineering services and hardware over multiple years. The majority of the revenue generated will come through royalty payments on any hydrogen delivered to the end customers.

The test took place on a North American highway in Q4 2023 over 19,312 kilometres with fully loaded comparison trucks. The test ran with and without cylinder deactivation active via a dashboard switch.

Iveco aims to leverage LIST’s expertise to find lightweight composite materials which enable weight reduction in vehicles to  enhance fuel efficiency and improve TCO for fleet operators.

This, according to Ceres, will help lead to the scale and speed of the development of new zero-emission technologies and help the company develop its fuel cell technologies for power generation and electrolysers for green hydrogen.

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.