Australian electric vehicle company Nexport has a grand vision for Australian made electric vehicles, with a range that includes passenger vehicles, buses and trucks, company founder and CEO Luke Todd tells The Driven.
Nexport is aiming to leverage a deal to supply the Sydney bus network with all-electric buses to establish a local manufacturing base producing electric buses, cars and trucks within Australia, integrating technology licenced from Chinese EV giant BYD.
Nexport has been chosen to join the NSW government’s public bus procurement panel, which the operator’s of the state’s public transport operators can draw upon to purchase buses for the public fleet, and the company is already undertaking to fulfil orders for 115 buses, and looking to supply more.
The company announced the plans at an event overlooking Sydney Harbour, attracting interested investors, politicians and a number of electric vehicle fans. Present at the launch, highlighting the history of electric vehicle production in Australia, was a model of the 1959 Model 100E Ford Prefect that had been modified by Australian Ray Dooring in the 1960s to run on an electric motor.
The company is currently assembling buses through overseas operations in China and Malaysia, with some parts being sourced from Switzerland, but is looking to move as much as this manufacturing onto Australia shores as part of its next batch of bus orders.
“Everything that is currently happening in Malaysia, as of our next batch of vehicles, will actually be built in New South Wales,” Todd told The Driven. “So we’re creating a platform where we’ll able to create roughly 2,000 jobs that we’ll be creating in Moss Vale.”
“We’ll be doing roughly 95 per cent of the content locally, so it will be the body manufacturing, the all of the trimmings, glaziers.”
Todd said that Nexport said that it was already looking to expand its offering to other classes of vehicles, including passenger vehicles and trucks. Nexport has already launched an all-electric spin-off, with a fleet of 120 taxis already deployed in Sydney.
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