The contract stipulates a firm order for two hundred buses, to be delivered beginning in 2026, plus options to acquire up to 550 more.

“Iveco has doubled its market share in the UK over the last five years,” Cutts opens. “Last year, we finished just shy of 5%. That was a tactical decision to grow our vehicle park and volume, re-establishing ourselves as a serious player.”

MAN said it will begin handing over the first batch of trucks at the end of the third quarter of this year; these will be deployed at various locations across Europe.

The new Class 8 truck has a bumper-to-back-of-cab length of 113.5 inches, 3.5 inches shorter than the preceding Anthem generation and a full 12 inches shorter than the newly-released ‘Pioneer’ range.

The majority of this order are non-AC diesel buses.

Volvo announced the start of electric truck production at its facility in Wacol, Queensland, which coincided with a 30-unit order from logistics firm Linfox.

Volvo’s new ‘Safety Zones’ feature, available through its ‘Volvo Connect’ digital services, allows operators to “geofence” certain locations, such as a port or a logistics centre, and assign specific speed limits (20 km/h and above).

According to the terms of the agreement, MAN will begin deliveries of ‘TGX’ heavy-duty trucks to Gartner this summer, in batches of up to 350 units per year until the end of 2028.

This adds additional capacity to Ashok Leyland’s bus manufacturing – in FY2023/24 output exceeded 17,000 FBU buses and bus chassis.

The milestone vehicle was a battery electric ‘eSprinter’, assembled at the ‘Mercedes-Benz Vans LLC’ plant in Charleston, South Carolina, where production of the new eSprinter range was initially launched in 2023.

The announcement was made following a launch event held in the city of Dubai in the middle of April together with MAN’s local importer, Darwish bin Ahmed & Sons, which has sold MAN trucks in the emirates for thirty years.

In total Volvo delivered 1,429 vehicles in Latin America during 2024 with Chile (238 and Peru (162) being the main continental export markets.