Solaris has agreed to supply up to sixteen buses to the King County Metro Transit Department, the public transit authority which serves King County and the city of Seattle in the state of Washington.

The vehicle in question is an articulated ‘Urbino 18’ battery electric bus, one of fifty ordered in 2023 by Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe, the state-owned company which manages public transportation in the German capital.

‘Terberg Tractors Polska’ will be based in a former truck dealership which is now occupied by sister company ‘Terberg Matec Polska’, which sells Terberg’s refuse collection equipment.

The deal, understood to be worth KRW13trn (USD9.4bn), comes a year after the two companies decided to scrap plans to build a battery manufacturing joint venture in Turkey due to weakening demand for electric vehicles (EVs) in Europe.

The ‘Urbino 24’ double-articulated buses will serve on bus rapid transit routes in the city.

Transdev says it will deploy them in the Province of Utrecht in the central Netherlands.

The new highly automated 16,000 sqm battery pack manufacturing facility produces lithium-ion batteries for heavy-duty applications.

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.

Somewhere in the industrial estate of a small city in western Poland, there is a charging station which was installed by me. The site of the installation was near the headquarters of Ekoenergetyka, the manufacturer of the charging station in question, and the hosts of a conference which brought together several hundred guests involved or interested in the development of Europe’s charging infrastructure. The event, organised by an industry association called CharIn, was the third such conference and “testival” to have taken place in Europe since 2023.

The first Urbino was unveiled on 26 May 1999 at the Poznań Motor Show – since then, over 25,000 units have rolled off the production line at the Bolechowo factory.

Daimler Buses and BMZ are set to co-develop new generation (NMC4) e-bus batteries to be equipped in Daimler Buses. Improvements in cell chemistry, life cycle and energy density should result in longer range and battery longevity.  

The total value of the orders, including 10-year service contracts, amounts to EUR200m, making it one of the largest in the company’s history, according to Solaris.