ADL announced that the Plaxton (Panther & Leopard) coaches are to be built on the Volvo B8R chassis with a choice of I-Shift (automated manual) and automatic transmissions. These coaches are set to be built at ADL’s Scarborough plant, which ADL says, “benefits from a flexible set-up that allows lines to be switched between coach and bus production.”

At stand 629 in hall 6, the company is set to debut its new roof-mounted AC138 EVO air conditioning system which is set to go into series production in Q1 2025.

Around GBP600m has been committed by KKR & Co Inc, and a further GBP270m is being invested by one of Zenobē’s existing shareholders, Infracapital.

Production is to take place at Temsa’s factory in Adana, with a prototype expected by next year and series production towards the end of 2025. Both engineering teams will be working closely together in order to meet these deadlines.

The funding is being allocated to the government’s Zero Emission Buses Regional Area (ZEBRA, now ZEBRA 2) Scheme, initially launched in 2021 to allow local transport authorities to bid for funding for zero-emission buses and supporting infrastructure.

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).

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.

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.

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.