DAF opens new assembly plant for

Battery Electric Trucks

DAF’s completely new assembly plant for battery electric trucks was officially opened by Micky Adriaansens, the Dutch minister of Economic Affairs and Climate.

The new facility has been commissioned at DAF’s main production site in Eindhoven, the Netherlands and will be instrumental in the further development of the company’s leading position in providing sustainable transport solutions.

DAF has built its DAF Electric Truck Assembly plant for the production of its latest generation of battery electric trucks. The New DAF XD and XF Electric are available in a range of configurations.

These are powered by PACCAR e-Motors and equipped with battery packs of 2 up to 5 strings (210 to 525 kWh). The modular

Kia to produce purpose built ride hail cars

Kia Corporation and Kakao Mobility announced a collaboration to develop purpose-built vehicles (PBVs) optimised for ride-hailing and new mobility services linked to PBVs.

The parties signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the project at Kia’s headquarters in Seoul. Under the agreement, Kia will develop customised PBVs using operation data of vehicles to meet the specific requirements of Kakao Mobility’s ride-hailing services.

Kia plans to reflect various solutions developed through this cooperation with Kakao Mobility in its future dedicated PBV models, planned for launch in 2025.

The two companies also intend to collaborate on planning specialised services linking software and vehicle data for Kia’s dedicated PBVs.

The service includes enabling interaction between in-vehicle-infotainment and the software platform of Kakao Mobility.

approach allows the trucks to be tailored precisely to customer requirements and needs. Full electric ranges of up to 500 kilometres are possible making 1,000 ‘zero emission’ kilometres achievable with careful planning of routes and recharging. With fast charging of up to 350 kW, battery packs can be charged to 80 percent of their capacity in only 45 minutes. Production of quality validation trucks is about to start with series production of customer vehicles planned. DAF expects production to increase to thousands of vehicles per annum in the near future, in line with the increasing demand for fully electric trucks.

Try before you buy hydrogen electric trucks

Zero-emission, hydrogen-powered commercial vehicle innovator, Hydrogen Vehicle Systems (HVS) has asked fleet operators to register expressions of interest in trialling its state-of-the-art, clean-sheet-designed hydrogen-electric Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) prior to purchase.

Supported trials are set to commence in Q4 2025 once the exhaustive pre-production prototyping phase is completed and the HGVs are ready to enter volume production in the UK.

Fleet operators will be offered extensive trial periods to test the hydrogen-electric HGV tractor unit, putting it through its paces and evaluating how the zero-emission vehicle will perform within their fleets.

Skoda forges ahead with e-campaign

Škoda Auto has manufactured 500,000 battery systems as the brand forges ahead with its e-campaign.

The company is investing heavily in the transformation of its facilities and development, digitalisation and further education of its workforce, with the company already upskilling more than 23,000 employees to prepare for the demands of e-mobility. The systems are used by Škoda cars, as well as group brands Audi, SEAT and Volkswagen. In May 2022, Škoda Auto launched the production of battery systems for all-electric vehicles based on the Volkswagen Group’s

Modular Electrification Toolkit (MEB). The systems have a capacity of 55 to 82 kWh and are installed in the company’s own MEB models as well as MEB cars by Volkswagen and Audi.

The car manufacturer will be commissioning another MEB assembly line in 2023, increasing its total production volume to 2,300 units per day, consisting of 1,500 MEB units per day, and 800 units for PHEV battery systems.