This will relieve prohibitive upfront costs for customers whilst improving charging efficiency and energy management as many businesses look to capitalise on Californian state funding to transition fleets to zero emissions.

The truck charging site will be located specifically within the bounds of the Able Humber Port, just north of Immingham on the southern bank of the Humber estuary in northeastern England.

Eight operators will benefit from the success of a bid made by charging-as-a-service firm Zenobē, including major fleets such as Stagecoach and McGill’s Buses.

The company will use the funds to add automation capabilities to the production lines by introducing robots. This will increase the production capacity of its Zielona Góra factory, in order to meet the growing demand for EV chargers in Europe.

The charging hub will be built in Bagnolo San Vito, a town located near Mantua and the A22 Autostrada del Brennero.

Dr Weir will lead the company’s expansion into Europe and North America, according to Zenobē.

The consortium claims that the lithium-ion battery enhanced with Niobium, is an unprecedented innovation in the global automotive industry, offering ultra-fast charging capabilities to achieving full charge in just 10 minutes.

The public demonstration of the prototype took place in the town of Plattling and was attended by Bavarian State Minister for Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy, Hubert Aiwanger, and Professor Monika Schnitzer, who is the Chairwoman of the German Council of Economic Experts, along with two hundred guests.

These charging hubs will be built at existing MAN service sites across Europe, primarily in industrial areas or next to motorways.

At the latest Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo, held between 20-23 May at the Las Vegas Convention Center, we spoke to several firms that offer support to operators looking to switch their fleets to electric vehicles. One of the firms we spoke with was Zenobē, a London-based “charging-as-a-service” company with considerable experience already in the passenger transport segment. There is a bewildering number of charging providers in the market, and it can be difficult to tell them apart and assess their individual merits. Now that Zenobē is expanding to the American market, we decided this would be a good time to find out what makes it different from the competition.

There were many companies at the latest ACT Expo presenting variations on the theme of what one might call “Electric-Fleet-as-a-service” – that is to say, a contractual relationship where the operator has the upfront costs and hassles of switching to an electric fleet taken out of its hands by a “turnkey” service provider. One such company I spoke with was Revolv, whose CEO, Scott Davidson, feels that terms such as “X-as-a-service” and “turnkey” have been diluted through overuse. “Our product is performance,” he said.

There are some ideas that seem so obvious upon their introduction that one wonders why somebody did not think of it earlier. A hands-free charger that automatically plugs into an electric vehicle and unplugs from it when finished surely qualifies as a not-so-obvious obvious idea. It makes perfect sense – given the potential dangers of handling high-voltage equipment, and also given the prospect of driverless vehicles – to develop chargers that do not require a human to operate them. After speaking to Erin Galiger – who is director of the North American market for Dutch tech firm Rocsys – at the latest ACT Expo, I learned that hands-free chargers have several more applications than I had initially expected.