ITZEHOE, Germany—After three years of development, ElectricBrands AG has built a fully functional prototype of the XBUS, a lightweight modular electric vehicle. Production is set to begin here in mid-2022.
BAY CITY, MI—SK Siltron CSS, a semiconductor wafer manufacturer, recently announced plans to invest $300 million over the next three years to provide manufacturing and R&D capabilities of advanced materials for electric vehicles in a new facility here.
FRANKFURT—Preliminary data by the International Federation of Robotics shows a 19 percent sales increase of industrial robots to China in 2020, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, nearly 167,000 industrial robots were delivered there last year.
MONZA, Italy—Polyolefin manufacturer Borealis has announced that it is installing a solar photovoltaic rooftop array at its plant here to generate electricity for production purposes. Interestingly, the array's modules use Borealis' Quentys encapsulant film technology.
PARIS—According to a recent study conducted by the Capgemini Research Institute, 5G technology is benefiting manufacturers that have already adopted it in their factories.
ANN ARBOR, MI—North American robot orders in the first quarter of 2021 were up 20 percent over the same period in 2020, according to industry statistics released by the Association for Advancing Automation.
SCOTTSDALE, AZ—The Sustainability Consortium recently reported that its THESIS assessments of product manufacturers show a 38 percent improvement since 2016, indicating that companies continued to pursue sustainability improvements during the 2020 global pandemic.
SPARTANBURG, SC—Defense contractor Oshkosh has won the $6 billion contract to build the U.S. Postal Service's upcoming Next Generation Delivery Vehicles here.
LONG BEACH, CA—Relativity Space, the first company to 3D print an entire rocket, recently announced that $650 million in new funding enables it to begin production on the Terran R, a fully reusable, entirely 3D-printed launch vehicle.