MAN has announced its intention to build a new battery factory will manufacture high-voltage items for electric trucks and buses.
The large-scale production project will be at MAN’s Nuremberg site and will be up and running by early 2025.
To this end, the company will invest around €100m over the next five years at the site, currently used for combustion engines.
Production capacities will be expanded to over 100,000 units a year at the new battery factory.
As a result, the project will secure 350 jobs for the truck manufacturer.
Initially, the batteries will be manufactured manually at the MAN battery factory in Nuremberg in a small series production.
Construction of large-scale production is scheduled to start in mid-2023 and to be completed by the end of 2024.
Therefore, MAN is laying the foundations for the large-scale industrialisation of electric drive systems for trucks and buses.
Meanwhile, there is support for the project from the Bavarian State Government.
It has promised a contribution of around €30m for energy research and technology funding from 2023 to 2027.
This financial contribution is on the assumption that certain requirements are met.
Also, these funds will be used to conduct research in a variety of areas related to electric truck batteries.
For example, battery assembly, cell chemistry and development, battery safety and battery recycling.
Alexander Vlaskamp, chairman of MAN’s executive board, made the announcement about the battery factory.
“We are now starting to industrialise electromobility and continue on our path to climate-neutral mobility in commercial vehicles,” he said.
“It is a groundbreaking location and investment decision for the future.
At the same time, it is part of MAN’s transformation into a provider of sustainable transport solutions,” he added.
Concluding, he said: “This now paves the way for a commercial vehicle e-cluster ‘made in Bavaria’.”
