June saw Knorr-Bremse open a new manufacturing plant in Dalian in China’s Liaoning province, as it looks to increase its share of the local market for commercial vehicle braking systems.

Stagecoach has ordered another 244 ADL vehicles, 180 Enviro400EV double-deckers and the single-decker 54 Enviro200EVs (10.9m and 11.7m versions). This is the first order for Alexander Dennis’s new integral single-decker.

Now, in an attempt to plug the hole in the budget sheet by producing more buses and therefore fulfilling orders, the company is re-introducing the use of contract manufacturing through assembly partners in China to aid the main factory in Deurne.

The consortium claims that the lithium-ion battery enhanced with Niobium, is an unprecedented innovation in the global automotive industry, offering ultra-fast charging capabilities to achieving full charge in just 10 minutes.

On its website, Spheros is promoting thermal management products for various applications, including buses, refrigerated vehicles, and e-mobility.

At the latest Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo, held between 20-23 May at the Las Vegas Convention Center, we spoke to several firms that offer support to operators looking to switch their fleets to electric vehicles. One of the firms we spoke with was Zenobē, a London-based “charging-as-a-service” company with considerable experience already in the passenger transport segment. There is a bewildering number of charging providers in the market, and it can be difficult to tell them apart and assess their individual merits. Now that Zenobē is expanding to the American market, we decided this would be a good time to find out what makes it different from the competition.

There are some ideas that seem so obvious upon their introduction that one wonders why somebody did not think of it earlier. A hands-free charger that automatically plugs into an electric vehicle and unplugs from it when finished surely qualifies as a not-so-obvious obvious idea. It makes perfect sense – given the potential dangers of handling high-voltage equipment, and also given the prospect of driverless vehicles – to develop chargers that do not require a human to operate them. After speaking to Erin Galiger – who is director of the North American market for Dutch tech firm Rocsys – at the latest ACT Expo, I learned that hands-free chargers have several more applications than I had initially expected.

Valeo says it will also be partnering with Seeing Machines to offer a “best-in-class” full system for interior sensing, available to the passenger car and commercial vehicle segments.

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 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.