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.

According to Shawn Furman, Sales Manager for Optimal EV’s transit business, who spoke to T&BB at the latest ACT Expo, the company has preferred to keep a low profile over the last couple of years, especially given the bad press which EVs are receiving. While competitors such as Lightning eMotors have gone under, Optimal EV has been quietly working away on its main offerings, an electric chassis-cab and a battery electric low floor shuttle bus.

Several of the vehicles were shown in order to promote the work that Poindexter’s brands have done to design bodies which are better suited to the characteristics and demands of the electric driveline: one of these was ‘Project Blackjack’, a proof-of-concept vehicle with a lightweight and aerodynamic Morgan truck body.

At its stand, Thermo King present its ‘e200’, ‘e300’, and ‘e1000’ transport refrigeration units and the ‘Precedent S-750i’, a hybrid TRU.

The company used the 2024 ACT Expo to announce the appointment of Nikolas Runge as the new Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Runge will be responsible for scaling the engineering and product development teams to bring further innovation to its product range. The company rolled out 4,300 chargers in 2023 and the Board plans to build on this success.

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”.

Speaking with T&BB at the Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo, Eric Fisher, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Blue Arc, said that the group tried first of all to partner with various body builder partners and promising startups before eventually deciding to chart its own course.

John Dunn, formerly of Proterra and now working for Phoenix, said that Proterra Transit continued to build buses during the Chapter 11 bankruptcy and a “large number” of customer contracts were carried over following the acquisition.

To the west of Bursa, in a village called Hasanağa lies the headquarters of Karsan. Though the company’s history extends back to 1966, it is only in the past decade that it has emerged as an original equipment manufacturer of note in the commercial vehicle industry. Today, it has earned a reputation as a “dark horse” among the Turkish manufacturers, a previously unknown company which has very quickly surged to prominence in the domestic and European markets.

Michelin has added the Smart Predictive Tyre feature to the MICHELIN Connected Fleet suite of digital services in the UK. The system monitors tyre pressure (TPMS), wear and degradation using smart sensors to provide real-time alerts that help fleet operators improve safety and efficiency, specifically regarding scheduled maintenance.

The new AMXE250 e-motor is a compact, permanent magnet synchronous motor designed for high-efficiency propulsion.

The BP97E is a high-energy-density battery pack and is the latest development in Accelera’s NMC battery platform.