On 30 September 2024, Britain’s last remaining coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar was closed down. Opened in 1968, the power station had a capacity of 2,000 MW and annual carbon emissions in the millions of tonnes when it was decommissioned. Today, local authorities and consortia have new ambitions for the old plants: to repurpose the existing infrastructure for the production of green hydrogen. That was the message carried away by news reporters who attended an open day at the Loughborough University campus on 8 November. Visitors got to see some mature products of the transition taking place in the east midlands. These were the fuel-cell-powered vehicles displayed by Intelligent Energy Ltd in front of its headquarters on the edge of the campus.

“Despite substantial investments, including GBP 25 million in UK government grants, the vision of vehicle manufacturing has failed,” the British startup said in a press release announcing its change of strategy.

DAF Trucks UK has been the market leader in the UK truck (trucks >6t) market for 30 years. T&BB analyses the reasons behind this continued success and poses the question, will DAF UK remain the market leader for the next 30 years as the industry transitions to zero emissions?

We know that new electric HGVs carry a significant upfront cost compared to that of their diesel ICE equivalents. DAF is aiming to leverage big data and AI to drive efficiency gains for operators, ameliorating that initial cost.

Levin (President and CEO of Scania) takes over the function from Harald Seidel, President of DAF Trucks. He will work closely with ACEA President Ola Källenius (Mercedes-Benz Group AG chairman) who is serving in his first term.

Thomas Hilse, President of the Firefighting Business Unit at the Iveco Group and CEO of Magirus has left the company with immediate effect.

As part of its turnaround strategy and decision to outsource production and become an OED (Original Equipment Designer), the company announced a closed auction of bus, truck, and general automotive parts starting on Thursday, 23 January 2025.

When Jim Hutchinson – today the CEO and founder of Fusion Processing Ltd, an autonomous vehicle technology company based in Bristol – began his career in electronic engineering, he could not have imagined that the radar and sensor equipment he was working on would eventually be used to make buses and trucks that can drive themselves. “I can’t claim to have been that visionary [back then],” he told Truck & Bus Builder in an interview. The realisation dawned in the late 2000s, when Hutchinson saw that the growing need for sophisticated sensors in the automotive sector – used at that time for advanced driver assistance systems – would “ultimately” lead to self-driving vehicles navigating with a combination of cameras, radars, and other perception hardware.

The company announced it will be implementing job cuts this year as part of this restructuring plan. This will mean reducing its workforce by approximately 16.5%, equating to 102 full-time equivalent positions.

The company has invested capital into doubling its windscreen manufacturing capacity from 35,000 to 70,000 by the end of 2027. In September, it commissioned a new ScreenMax bending furnace from Glaston Oyj and plans to add new glass cutting tooling and lamination equipment over the next two years.

On December 23, 2024, the company issued a “Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act” which notified employees at its Bolingbrook, Illinois, and Troy, Michigan, facilities, of potential layoffs. These notices initiate a 60-day period before workforce reductions take effect, with layoffs expected to be completed by February 2025 if the company cannot secure additional funding.

The T9 is targeted at the high end of the pickup segment and features high specification levels, including advanced driver assistance systems.