Last year Volkswagen Caminhões e Ônibus announced plans to allocate BRA110m million (USD27m) to make the necessary adjustments at its Resende (RJ) plant to tailor its production lines to begin assembling electric trucks as soon as 2020.

Iveco Defence Vehicles, a subsidiary of CNH Industrial NV, has won an order for potentially more than 2,900 high mobility heavy-duty  military trucks from the Romanian Ministry of National Defence.

Coinciding with start of production of the e-Sprinter in Dusseldorf – Mercedes-Benz Vans held the official commercial market launch of the eSprinter in six major German cities between the 9th and 17th of December 2019, marking its availability to customers.

The truck market in Brazil has continued its recovery and to expand strongly with sales exceeding 100,000 units in 2019, an increase of 33.3% compared with 75,994 units in 2018.

York-based CV and agricultural equipment manufacturer, Harsh UK Ltd is introducing major modifications to its hook-loader range to speed up operations.

Heliox BV, the principal supplier of electric charging equipment in a truck electrification research project since 2017, has issued a joint statement with its partners saying that the consortium has made huge strides forward in its charging infrastructure and battery charging density.

Kenworth Truck Company of Kirkland and driveline component supplier, Dana Incorporated, announced their collaboration on electric powertrain development for medium-duty Kenworth battery electric vehicles at the CES event in Las Vegas early this month.

MAN Truck & Bus UK Ltd has opened a new state-of-the-art dealership in Gateshead just two miles from the A1(M) north/south motorway for providing support for the complete range of MAN vehicles, ie trucks, vans, buses and coaches.

Presenting a year-end overview of its performance in the markets of the UK and Ireland, James Charnock, commercial vehicle and services director at Renault Trucks UK, said while political uncertainty surrounding Brexit had driven some pre-buy activity this year, the result had been overall market growth in the medium and heavy-duty (MHD) truck sector with 47,000 registrations at the end of November – up 14% on 2018, exceeding expectations. 

The Mercedes-Benz Vans Dusseldorf plant started series production of the full electric Sprinter on December 12.

The Competence Center for Emission-Free Mobility has now been the pilot factory for vehicles with alternative drive systems for 25 years, the automotive giant, Daimler AG, announced last month.

Lion Electric Company, the Quebec Government and six other industry partners have announced a major project to initiate electrification of heavy-duty commercial vehicles in the Canadian province of Quebec.