Rêver Automotive Thailand Company Ltd is the name of the Thai importer and distributor BYD vehicles, which will now be responsible for assembling the vehicles through a subsidiary at a facitlity near Bangkok.

Isuzu Motors Ltd, headquartered in Yokohama in Japan’s Kanagawa prefecture, unveiled its first battery-powered D-Max one-ton pickup truck at the Bangkok International Motor Show in April

The contract for 15 buses is worth over EUR10m and includes the provision of 15 stationary chargers at the depot and two pantograph stations located in the city.

On 10 April, members of the press descended on the Flemish city of Roeselare to visit a new bus factory operated by Dutch company VDL Bus & Coach. Ostensibly, they were there to report on the factory itself and the ribbon cutting ceremony which marked its official opening, but I suspect that the local media were hunting for information on an entirely different topic. Indeed, the CV trade journalists hardly spoke of anything else: the bankruptcy of commercial vehicle manufacturer Van Hool and the prospect of a rescue by VDL.

With more than 100 locations authorised to sell and service its electric vehicles, 30% of Navistar’s dealer network is now EV certified.

The TransMilenio system in the city of Bogotá, Colombia, claims to have an electric bus fleet of over 1,600 vehicles, the second largest in South America behind Santiago in Chile.

T&BB decided to delve into the reasons for this sales success story by interviewing the top management of Stuart Beeton, Head of Sales & Marketing and Peter Murphy, Managing Director of Isuzu Truck UK.

Higer imports buses to South America via a JV in Brazil.

Earlier this month at the Commercial Vehicle Show at the NEC in Birmingham, T&BB spoke to Greg Ethridge, the Chief Financial Officer of American EV manufacturer, Canoo Inc who confirmed that the company had indeed purchased manufacturing assets (robotics and machinery equipment) from now defunct, Arrival Ltd. The manufacturing assets are set to be shipped by sea to the Canoo manufacturing facility in Oklahoma City, in the U.S.A.

February saw PepsiCo take delivery of its first electric heavy-duty truck in Brazil; a semi-heavy rigid (15t ≤ gvw up to 40 tons) P25 6x2 Scania truck, produced in Sweden, which is to be used for internal logistics goods distribution operations between PepsiCo’s four factories* in the state of São Paulo.

According to the latest agreement, the companies plan to co-develop electric heavy-duty trucks (both battery-electric and fuel-cell electric) for the European market.

The acquisition is part of a EUR54m investment by the National Transport Authority which will fund the replacement of Limerick’s bus fleet with battery-powered vehicles.