Based in Brussels, the new joint venture, called 'Ionway', will be responsible for producing precursor and cathode active materials for lithium-ion batteries at scale.

The four projects are expected to take place over seven years, with the first two allocated for planning and procurement and the next five for trials.

The Bill, if passed, is expected catalyse faster renewal of Brazil’s national bus fleets with more modern less polluting and less environmentally harmful vehicles.

ITD Industries, a trailer manufacturer, will set aside room for a Nikola truck showroom and service operations at its site, and it will promote the vehicles through its sales channels.

The exhibition, which took place from the 6th to the 7th of September, attracted over 150 exhibitors involved in low-carbon mobility. The exhibition had a small collection of companies dedicated to the commercial vehicle market sector.

The project aims to build a commercially competitive 44-tonne proof of concept Hydrogen Fuel Cell (HFC) heavy goods tractor unit. With funding from the UK’s Advanced Propulsion Centre, project ICEBreaker is set to begin next month (October 2023) with the aim of developing lighter, more efficient hydrogen fuel cell Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs) with a lower cost of ownership.

The funding is being allocated to the government’s Zero Emission Buses Regional Area (ZEBRA, now ZEBRA 2) Scheme, initially launched in 2021 to allow local transport authorities to bid for funding for zero-emission buses and supporting infrastructure.

The IE-Drive 100 hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) utilises the company’s “patented evaporatively cooled (EC) technology”, whilst the hydrogen fuel cell stack delivers 155kW of power. In terms of the architecture, the design is centred around ‘blending’ the desired performance with the space constraints of LCVs. IE stated the HFC is currently being tested with various UK partners.

The funding is to come from the Department for Transport (DfT), National Highways, HS2 Ltd, Network Rail and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

The Ferndale facility has the capacity to produce up to 850 ‘Vicinity Classic’ and ‘Vicinity Lightning’ (i.e., ICE and EV) buses and 6,250 ‘VMC 1200’ battery electric trucks per year.

The planned factory will be built in the Rijnmond region of the Netherlands before 2026 and will allow the Dutch startup to scale up production of its fuel cell systems to 1,000 units annually.

Altogether, the bus and coach group will raise gross proceeds of approximately USD444m through the refinancing plan.