Brazil’s Fábrica Nacional de Motores (FNM) has been reborn with electric trucks powered by batteries from Northern California’s Octillion Power Systems. The collaboration will produce Class 6 and Class 8 trucks as well as buses and tractors.

Octillion has now been announced as FNM’s official battery supplier after a successful run of supplying the Brazilian company’s prototypes. The two companies say that Octillion will open a local battery factory inside FNM’s facility. This will lower manufacturing and logistics costs.

The Brazilian vehicle maker has had a checkered past going back to 1942 and was recently reborn with investors that include the brothers Zeca and Alberto Martins. In terms of family traditions, the Martins brothers are the sons of José Antonio Fernandes Martins, who was an executive and shareholder of Marcopolo for 53 years, the world’s second-largest motorcoach builder. The brothers are partners in the holding company that owns FNM and just opened the company’s new factory in Caxias do Sul city.

The collaboration between battery makers and the vehicle manufacturer will produce the FNM model 832, the Class 6 truck with up to 14-ton capacity, and the FNM model 833, the Class 8 truck with an 18-ton capacity, as well as buses and tractors in the company’s next steps. Fittingly, considering Brazil’s spread out population, the Octillion battery in FNM trucks supports a range up to 300 km for urban deliveries.

Read the full article here.