Mercedes will deliver nearly 5,000 panel vans for parcel delivery over the coming months, of which roughly three-quarters will be large-size ‘eSprinter’ models.

The manufacturer has signed a contract with South Australia’s Department for Infrastructure and Transport, which will put them to use in the city of Adelaide.

The company commemorated the establishment of its heavy truck factory – now also its headquarters – in 1955, since which date it has built more than 1.25 million trucks and 2 million cabs.

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

The first trucks are scheduled to roll off the production line at the former MAN plant in Austria by the end of the year.

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.

Harris said the appointment of Aquila is part of its “ambitious growth plan” in the British market, where it plans to expand its coverage and customer support across every region.

PEI announced that it has worked with Spanish bus manufacturer Castrosua to develop an articulated version of the ‘Nelec’ electric bus range which is mounted on a chassis supplied by China’s BYD.

Volvo’s new ‘Dynamic Steering’ can detect a puncture in the truck’s front tyre(s) and respond immediately in order to mitigate the impact.

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.

Providing 356 kilowatt hours of energy storage, these battery packs carry nickel-manganese-cobalt cells which are packaged at MAN’s facility in Nuremberg.

On a mixed production line, MAN can produce approximately one hundred trucks per day with diesel and battery electric drivelines, taking around eight hours to build a truck from start to finish.