The new Clarksville manufacturing facility will make battery cells for the first time in the USA, as well as battery packs for Microvast's growing portfolio of CV customers in North America.

Wolfgang Kolb will assume responsibility for global sales, leveraging his 20 years of experience at various automotive companies.

The building will be constructed and expanded in phases up to 2030, representing a planned investment of up to EUR4.8bn, or CAD7bn.

Scheduled to go into operation in July 2023, the plant will be able to recycle up to 15,000 metric tons of battery materials a year and is currently undergoing a series of diagnostic tests using old batteries from different manufacturers to develop and refine the operational mechanism to discharge, dismember, recycle and shred the remaining battery material.

Following validation tests, Scania and Northvolt confirmed that the cells have the capacity to propel trucks up to 1.5 million kilometres over their lifetime. 

‘Valence’ is a cloud-based platform which offers a range of tools to fleet operators, including: real-time monitoring of fleet vehicles (bus or truck); data analytics for monitoring vehicle performance; diagnostics for identifying faults; and charge management.

The new laboratories will be jointly managed by MAN and two institutes of higher education: the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU) and the Technical University of Nuremberg Georg Simon Ohm (“Ohm”).

Slated for completion by 2026, the new battery system will utilise a new generation of battery cells (GEN4) to be developed by Blue Solutions and integrated by Forsee Power into its battery systems, with Bluebus then making use of this new lithium-ion NMC (Nickel Manganese Cobalt) battery in its 6 and 12-metre electric buses.

The 350,000-square-foot factory will be built on a 100-acre site in Commerce Park II in the city of Hopkinsville, representing a total investment of USD504m - of which USD200m will be provided by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The site will be located in Queen Creek, on the outskirts of the Phoenix metropolitan area, with production set to begin in 2025 at a capacity of 27 GWh per year.

160 Proterra Powered ‘Saf-T-Liner C2 Jouley’ buses will be deployed in school districts across the state of South Carolina next year, paid for by funding from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The agreement with Italian lightweight automotive components manufacturer, Poggipolini, will see both companies combine resources, skills and research and development projects regarding battery module and pack design solutions to service the automotive EV sector.