The deal represents a key milestone in Mellor’s international growth strategy, marking its entry to the Canadian market.

Chief Commercial Officer Eric Baleviez announced to the press at Busworld that groundbreaking on a new plant in Albi would happen either later this year or early next year.

The Turkish manufacturer presented a 12-metre fuel cell electric bus, a battery electric coach, a self-driving prototype bus, and a new telematics system called 'BusMonitor'.

160 ‘Xcelsior’ 40-foot buses will replace end-of-life vehicles in METRO’s fleet, to be jointed later by an additional 50 options.

Customers will now have the choice of seven or eight packs, increasing the vehicle’s energy capacity by 33% and extending the range by 46 miles.

The 12-metre bus, dubbed ‘Lion’s Explorer E’, was supplied to Golden Arrow Bus Services for pilot testing in Cape Town, South Africa.

Signirficantly all these vehicles are fully accessible with automatic wheelchair lift and are equipped with modern passenger conveniences such as USB charger and Wi-Fi.

Series production of the Lion’s City E range began at Starachowice, Poland in October 2020.

MCV will produce the buses under licence at its facility in Egypt, employing chassis supplied from Volvo’s factories in Sweden.

130 units of the ‘Urbino 12 hydrogen’ line will be delivered over the next few years, the vast majority of which (127) will be delivered to the Metropolitan City of Bologna.

Latent demand has boosted sales of buses and coaches (7.5t GVW and above) in India, amongst other reasons, with registrations up by 38.9% in the first quarter (April to June) of the financial year 2023-24 to register 10,939 units compared with 7,876 units in the same quarter of the previous financial year (FY2022-23).

The FC-powered coach is based on a customized BharatBenz coach chassis and powered by a fuel cell system designed and developed by Reliance Industries.