130 units of the ‘Urbino 12 hydrogen’ line will be delivered over the next few years, the vast majority of which (127) will be delivered to the Metropolitan City of Bologna.

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 production expected to be completed by the end of 2026, the USD 550 million investment is expected to create 380 jobs and support the increased production of CV tyres, all equipped with RFID (radio frequency identification) tags that enable more efficient asset management, including retreading.

In May 2023, Sono Motors announced that it had filed for a protective shield proceeding with the Munich Local Court when the business became insolvent.

Higer completed the delivery of 780 Higer Buses worth USD55m to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia under the “Belt and Road Initiative”, signifying the largest ever bus export from China to Saudi Arabia.

About the retrofit of the H2 ICE engine, Lord Bamford, JCB Chairman, said: “We have retrofitted this vehicle with a JCB hydrogen engine to demonstrate how simple it will be to convert existing vans and to show that it is not only construction and agricultural machines that can be powered by hydrogen. While converting vans will not be for JCB to do, it does prove there is something else other than batteries that can work very effectively.”

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.

Lumax Auto already supplies engine oil under the the 'Ultra' brand name.

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.