The rebranding is part of the company's plan to completely reinvent itself going from light duty truck builder to producer of EV charging equipment.

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

The funding is to come from the Department for Transport (DfT), National Highways, HS2 Ltd, Network Rail and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

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.

The company is set to deliver a BrightDrop Zevo 400 and BrightDrop Zevo 600 electric van by Q4 this year. The vehicles will be produced at GM’s CAMI Assembly plant in Ontario, Canada.

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.

With USD10m in additional shareholder funds the company will focus on deployment of electric tarmac buses at Bengaluru international airport and development of a mid-mile heavy-duty EV truck platform.

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.

New trails of electric parcel delivery vans will take place shortly ahead of an announcement by First Hydrogen of when and where it will to start series production. First Hydrogen says the aim of the trials is to gather more data on fuel consumption, usage and efficiency, to calculate the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) more accurately.

UK operator, Newport Transport, appoints Equipmake to convert 8 of its double-deckers to electric power with its Zero Emission Drivetrain (ZED).

The vehicle shown was a 26-tonne ‘E-Tech D Wide’ 6x2 chassis with inward folding "bus-style" doors and low step height.

Intellectual property, offices, and testing facilities based in Apeldoorn, Netherlands have now been transferred to ConMet, and former staff associated with the heavy-duty motor development have moved to ConMet as well.