MAN Truck & Bus has officially initiated battery production at the Nuremberg production site in Germany, following €100m ($113.54m) investment.
The firm is also planning to make an additional €150m investment for further development in battery technology and increased value.
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The expansion will involve the production of battery modules, in addition to the packs, which consist of several modules, and will combine several battery cells.
Of the announced additional investments, around €18m will be subsidised, with funding provided by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK) and the Free State of Bavaria.
The Free State of Bavaria will also provide around €30m for the further development and research into battery technology at the MAN site in Nuremberg, focusing on areas such as battery assembly, cell chemistry, ageing, and battery safety.
MAN expects these investments to secure approximately 400 jobs and advance the site’s transformation.
MAN CEO Alexander Vlaskamp said: “Today is a historic day for MAN. With the start of battery production, the company that invented the diesel engine is entering a new era.
“Today we announced another milestone in the transformation towards climate-friendly drives: MAN will invest a further €150m in the expansion of battery production for future battery generations in Nuremberg. We have also recently stepped up our efforts in the further development of state-of-the-art diesel technology.
“This brings the total investment in Nuremberg to half a billion euros. This is a clear commitment to Bavaria and Germany as a centre of innovation.”
Furthermore, the company plans to invest approximately €250m in project in the production of the latest generation of diesel engines for the new D30 PowerLion driveline.
The company anticipates that nearly half of the trucks in Europe and approximately 90% of city buses will be equipped with zero-emission drive systems by 2030.
As a result, the “highly efficient and fuel-efficient” D30 engine will continue to be in demand well into the 2030s.
MAN said that its Nuremberg site produces battery packs in three different form factors.
The flat form factor is used in the MAN Lion’s City E, the battery-electric city bus, while the other two form factors are used in the MAN eTGL, MAN eTGS, and MAN eTGX eTrucks, which have total weights of 12 to 50 tonnes.
MAN plans to commence series production of the eTrucks eTGS and eTGX in Munich, Germany in June 2025.
Currently, the Nuremberg facility is equipped to produce 50,000 battery packs annually.
However, the new M50 building will have the capacity to produce 100,000 units annually with production planned to be adjusted based on the demand for battery-electric vehicles, MAN said.
Each battery undergoes 23 test programmes, with approximately 400 test parameters being recorded and documented individually for each battery to ensure the production process to be traced even after 15 years, the company said.
Last year, MAN partnered with E.ON and its subsidiary E.ON Drive Infrastructure to expand the charging infrastructure for commercial vehicles in Germany and Europe.
