MAN investing €100 million for making EV battery packs at Nuremberg

German CV maker MAN Truck & Bus SE has recently confirmed that its Nuremberg facility will be its principal site for the large-scale production of high-voltage battery packs for the brand's electric trucks and buses. 

The company has vowed to invest around €100 million for the development and production of the battery packs in Nuremberg, with a planned capacity of over 100,000 battery packs per year starting from 2025. 

Recently, the Bavarian Prime Minister Dr Markus Söder symbolically handed over four subsidy notifications from the state government totalling almost €25 million to MAN. As part of a comprehensive technology promotion for the development of EV battery packs, four of the five funding projects have been approved by the Bavarian State Government. 

"MAN has a future - this is what Minister President Söder wrote on the first battery pack from Nuremberg a year ago. This also applies to our Nuremberg site, which we are transforming into an innovation and production centre for alternative drives", said Alexander Vlaskamp, Chairman of the Executive Board of MAN Truck & Bus SE. 

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The battery packs produced at Nuremberg will be used to equip MAN's Lion's City E city bus that is already in series production since 2020 and the new MAN eTrucks scheduled for commercial delivery in 2024.

Markus Wansch, MAN Works Council Chairman Nuremberg and Deputy Chairman of the General and Group Works Council, said, "The transformation ahead of us is a major challenge that can only succeed if companies work together with works councils, trade unions and politicians. From this perspective, it is a good sign for the Nuremberg metropolitan region and the Free State of Bavaria that battery series production is being supported here at the MAN plant in Nuremberg". 

MAN is already producing battery packs in pre-series and small series on a smaller scale since 2021. From 2025, battery production will be gradually ramped up with a new production facility and in a new hall at the site. Around 15,000 to 25,000 e-trucks could be supported with the new battery line, the company claims. 

"If the ramp-up of eMobility in the truck sector takes place as we assume, the production capacity currently planned will no longer be sufficient at the end of this decade. In 2030, around 50 percent of all newly registered MAN trucks in Europe should be battery-electric - that would be around 40,000 units. That is why we are already starting to think about further expansion stages," Vlaskamp opined.