Jim Castelaz, who founded the company back in 2009 and is now Chief Technology & Revenue Officer, described Motiv to T&BB as “Silicon Valley meets Motor City”.

Among the most requested modifications in 2023 were to the light VW Delivery 4x4 truck model, and the Volksbus bus chassis.

The truck is to be imported by MFTBC’s local distributor, Daimler Truck Asia Taiwan Ltd, based in Taipei.

Ballard launched its 9th generation 120kW fuel cell engine (FCmove-XD) for the HGV market which is set to go into series production by the end of 2024 at the Ballard factory in Oregon, with plans to move production to its future fuel cell production Gigafactory in Rockwall, Texas. 

Mitsubishi Fuso in April launched the training programme targeted at young aftermarket mechanics.

Isuzu announced it has agreed to invest USD30m in Gatik AI, the US-based autonomous driving technology company, to strengthen its autonomous logistics programme.

Representatives from MAN told us that the company is taking orders with the truck now in series production at the Munich plant. Roger Turnbull, Head of EV Truck Sales at MAN UK was on hand to provide potential customers advice on choosing the correct vehicle configuration for their specific business needs.

The XB and XB Electric are set to replace the LF and LF Electric, with the XB Electric expected to go into series production in week 45, 2023, in Eindhoven.

The grant money depends on the powertrain or fuel type of the vehicle and the number of vehicles that the applicant wants to purchase, with the maximum amount on offer to any one company capped at EUR 500,000.

Temsa SA of Adana began selling the truck in June - sourced as completely built-up units from MFTBC’s assembly plant in Tramagal, Portugal.

The market for commercial vehicles over 2 tons gvw in the Philippines expanded by more than 5% to 27,959 units in the first quarter of 2024 after a slight decline to 26,597 units in the same period of last year.

The market for commercial vehicles over 2 tons gvw in Vietnam declined by almost 6% to 11,105 units in the first quarter of 2024