TRATON AG—formerly Volkswagen Truck & Bus—and Hino Motors Ltd. announced new details on their strategic partnership, announced earlier this year (earlier post).

Both partners have agreed on two strategic initiatives: to join forces in e-mobility and the plan to establish a procurement joint venture.

In e-mobility, TRATON and Hino plan to share their development efforts and market products in shorter time. Hino has a history of more than 25 years in electrified vehicles and the largest running fleet of hybrid commercial vehicles in the world.

Also, Hino will start sales of a heavy-duty hybrid truck (Hino PROFIA Hybrid) with an AI-based hill anticipation hybrid control system in Japan next year.

The partners have complementary approaches: while TRATON is focused on heavy-duty applications, Hino focuses on light- and medium-duty trucks. Joining their forces will strengthen their innovation power, the partners said.

The future procurement joint venture with balanced rights is planned as a small but powerful entity between both parties, leveraging synergies in purchasing. The planned joint venture aims at realizing synergies in global procurement for existing parts as well as parts for new technologies.

More details of the planned joint venture will be outlined in the upcoming months. A corresponding framework agreement has already been signed, filing for antitrust clearance is the next step in the process aiming to establish the joint venture company in latter half of 2019.

Separately, Volkswagen said it is pushing forward preparations for a potential Initial Public Offering (IPO) of TRATON GROUP. Further steps to this end were decided by the Volkswagen AG Supervisory Board in the most recent meeting. TRATON GROUP will now strengthen the team preparing a potential IPO with external experts. For this purpose, investment banks and legal advisors will be mandated in a timely manner.