The e-SMaRT AU56 City product is now in series production. The first tyres to roll off the production line will be 275/70 R22.5 tyres, designed for the urban electric bus market.

The latest update to the TracKing platform is the result of a collaboration with ZF Group which was first announced last year.

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.

This debut marks the first product from Maxion Structural Components' global partnership with French battery supplier, Forsee Power, announced in April last year.

The company added Canadian bus manufacturer Letenda to its client list. Forsee announced that its Zen Plus battery systems will be integrated into Letenda’s 9-metre Electrip zero-emission buses in Q4 2024. According to Forsee, use of NMC lithium-ion cells allows the battery pack to offer up to 5,000 charging cycles, increasing its TCO.

This expansion will boost its annual capacity of light truck and passenger tyres to 18 million annually by 2027. This will help the company service growing demand in the Asia Pacific market.

Electra Battery Materials will use the funds to demonstrate the scalability of its hydrometallurgical black mass process, which produces recycled nickel, cobalt and lithium which can then be reused in the production of new products. This will help make the Canadian EV supply chain more sustainable, relying on fewer precious metals used in EV batteries.

The new warehouse is intended to improve logistics and production at the site, where aluminium doors, automatic door systems, and ramps and lifts are made for buses, coaches, and trains.

Several of the vehicles were shown in order to promote the work that Poindexter’s brands have done to design bodies which are better suited to the characteristics and demands of the electric driveline: one of these was ‘Project Blackjack’, a proof-of-concept vehicle with a lightweight and aerodynamic Morgan truck body.

At its stand, Thermo King present its ‘e200’, ‘e300’, and ‘e1000’ transport refrigeration units and the ‘Precedent S-750i’, a hybrid TRU.

Between 12-13 June, Schmitz Cargobull AG hosted members of the press at its trailer factory in Vreden, located just on the border with the Netherlands. The ostensible reason for our visit was to receive a sneak preview of the company’s newest transport refrigeration product, which will be unveiled at the next IAA Transportation in Hanover: in fact, we learned much more about the company’s plans to expand and modernise its trailer factory, where it produces the ‘S.KO’ refrigerated models and the ‘S.BO’ dry freight range.