The US commercial fuel cell vehicle developer Hyzon Motors has founded a European subsidiary and announced the opening of its European headquarters in the Dutch city of Groningen.

Initiated by the Port of Rotterdam Authority and AirLiquide, several European companies have joined forces to provide a hydrogen corridor for fuel cell trucks in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. They target 1,000 trucks by 2025.

Rosenbauer’s first hybrid fire fighting vehicle will be handed over before the end of this year to the first cooperation partners: the Berlin Fire Brigade, Brandweer Amsterdam and Dubai Civil Defence.

The Dutch bicycle subscription provider Swapfiets has announced that it will also offer its service in London, Milan and Paris before the end of the year and will include other electric vehicles in its product range in addition to bicycles.

Tesla installed its first supercharger site in continental Europe with the faster V3 columns (up to 250 kW charging capacity) into operation near The Hague in the Netherlands on Friday. In Germany, two supercharger sites with the V3 charging points are currently being set up.

Groupe Renault has created a new subsidiary called Elexent to help other companies find solutions for charging their fleets of electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles. A branch office in France is already operational.

The Finnish technology group Wärtsilä is to develop two new purely electric ferries kitted out with the company’s drives. The ships will be built for the Norwegian operator Boreal Sjö by shipbuilder Holland Shipyards in the Netherlands.

There are 55 petrol stations in and around Amsterdam. A motion now submitted to the city council by the D66 party plans to convert around 30 of the petrol stations on municipal land into fast-charging locations for EVs in the next five years.

The Dutch municipality of Groningen plans to replace its 128 service vehicles with electric vehicles by 2025. The city will also install 74 smart-charging stations municipal buildings and is planning to build 350 more public charging stations in Groningen in the coming years.

With their newly founded joint venture Zero Emission Services (ZES), a Dutch consortium has taken up the cause of zero-emission inland container shipping. The initiators want to put the first electric ship into operation this year.

The Italian energy provider Enel has concluded eRoaming agreements with Allego, Bosch and Innogy through its subsidiary Enel X. The Enel X network will thus grow from 10,500 to over 30,000 public charging points.

Fastned opened its first fast-charging station in Amsterdam this weekend. The Dutch company claims “hundreds of electric cars can be charged per day at this station” and that the design would allow the addition of more fast-chargers in future.

The Chinese battery giant CATL has just signed a deal to provide VDL Bus & Coach with its high energy density battery system based on its standardised LFP-CTP (Cell to Pack) product platform.

A few days ago, a 27-tonne fuel-cell-powered truck from VDL started its first practical application in the Netherlands. The EU-funded H2Share project will gather practical experience in different regions of North-West Europe.

Dutch public transport operator Connexxion has ordered twenty Urbino 12 hydrogen buses from Solaris. The fuel cell buses are to be deployed in the south Netherlands from the end of next year.

InnoEnergy is investing around three million euros in e-bility, the manufacturer behind the German electric scooter brand Kumpan Electric. The goals of the cooperation are the further development of e-bility’s product and service range and faster market launch in other European countries.

BYD will be offering electric car components to third parties in order to diversify their income sources in the face of dwindling demand for cars. The components business is to be conducted through the recently founded sub-brand FinDreams.

BMW has activated the eDrive Zones digital service for the first PHEV models. This is intended to allow cars to automatically switch to electric mode when entering a certain zone, such as inner cities.

DAF Trucks has started to test the CF Hybrid in customer applications to gain experience in daily use. The Dutch transport company Peter Appel will be using two of these hybrid trucks to supply supermarkets in the Netherlands close to city centres.

EVBox partner Hollander Techniek has installed 124 charging points on the campus of Wageningen University in the Netherlands. The charging point each have an output of 11 kW and are meant for guests and employees of Unilever’s Global Foods Innovation Center at the University.

The Dutch government has now confirmed the planned purchase subsidies for privately used e-cars and has provided further details. Hybrid cars and vehicles above a list price of 45,000 euros will not be considered. However, secondhand electric used are eligible.

Before the end of this year, Chinese manufacturer Byton will be accepting advance orders from European customers for its first electric model M-Byte – for a reservation fee of 500 euros. Byton has also revealed some details on the planned distribution and charging service.

Aiways will offer its new battery electric SUV U5 in Europe exclusively through direct sales and not through traditional dealer networks. After sales and service will be handled by partners – the first ones for Europe have now been named.

Volvo Construction Equipment (Volvo CE) is now accepting advance orders for its electric construction equipment, specifically for the ECR25 Electric compact excavator and the L25 Electric compact wheel loader.

The Berlin-based electric scooter manufacturer Unu is about to enter the sharing business. According to a media report, the Dutch company Check wants to make Unu scooters available to customers by April at the latest.

Electric car charging pioneer NewMotion has been in business for ten years and since 2017 belongs to the Shell Group. They invited us to the ‘Meeting of Minds’ event in Amsterdam, where NewMotion CEO Sytse Zuidema gave our Nora Manthey a frank interview.

Intelligent charging of electric cars could significantly reduce the need for grid extensions. This is the result of a smart charging test within the framework of the now completed European project Invade. The central component of the test was a specially created algorithm from GreenFlux.

Seventeen partners want to turn the so-called Rhine-Alps corridor stretching from Rotterdam to Genoa into a purely hydrogen-based transport route – by water, road and rail. The RH₂INE project stands for ‘Rhine Hydrogen Integration Network of Excellence’.

Shortly before the market launch of the Corsa-e, Opel has significantly reduced the prices for the all-electric Ampera-e in the Netherlands. The Business version is now available from 34,149 euros instead of 44,799 euros.

The Dutch company Tribus is now presenting two electric buses at the VDV Electric Bus Conference in Berlin: The compact and modular city bus Movitas and the wheelchair-accessible VW e-Crafter mini-bus.