TEMSA, a Sabancı Holding and PPF Group subsidiary, has rolled up its sleeves to carry the banner for electric transportation worldwide. Having shipped its first electric bus export to Sweden in December, TEMSA started to produce Li-Ion battery packs that are used in its electric vehicles in its Adana plant.

Noting that TEMSA is one of the world’s few companies that has started to create innovative solutions in the field of new technologies many years ago and engineered multiple models oriented to electric vehicles are ready for mass production, Cevdet Alemdar, Industry SBU President of Sabancı Holding and Chairman of the Board of Directors of TEMSA, said, “We consider TEMSA as not only an automotive company but an automotive-oriented technology company. Now we are developing and manufacturing the battery packs we use in our electric vehicles, with our own engineers and our own R&D team at TEMSA’s Adana plant. Most recently, we have exported 6 TEMSA powered MD9 electriCITY buses, in which we used the battery packs that we developed and produced in our own battery facility. We are very proud of having implemented such an important project in TEMSA.”

Cevdet Alemdar expressed that TEMSA has focused on sustainability and technology in its growth strategy and said: “For instance, the world’s largest technology companies in the US use our TEMSA-branded buses for the transportation of their employees. We will also see our electric vehicles there in the forthcoming period. TS45 is our popular model in the US. We are in the process of producing the electric model of this vehicle. A prototype is presently being tested in California. We hope that our electric vehicles we have produced in Adana, with their battery packs, hoods, and TEMSA technology, will be on the roads in different regions of the USA, particularly in Silicon Valley.”

Cevdet Alemdar reminded that TEMSA has exported over 12 thousand vehicles to 66 countries worldwide and said: “More than five thousand TEMSA vehicles are on the roads of France. In the USA, one of the most competitive markets in the world, this number is over 1,000, and here we are in the top 5 in our segment. We want to achieve much greater success in the upcoming period in the USA.  We would like to undersign even greater achievements in the USA in the upcoming period. We believe that the North American market will be one of the engines of TEMSA’s growth in the future. In the same way, we are very strong in the UK, Italy, and Germany. Now, we will grow fast in Central and Eastern Europe also through the strength of our partner PPF and Skoda Transportation.”

Highlighting the fact that TEMSA has invested in R&D and innovation to a large extent for many years, Tolga Kaan Doğancıoğlu, TEMSA CEO, says a platform called TEMSATech has been established within the company to engineer new technologies. Mr. Doğancıoğlu states that studies in many different areas like autonomous vehicles, power distribution and vehicle charging unit, and charging stations along with electric vehicles are conducted in TEMSATech and said: “Approximately 30 engineers of us work here and the electric vehicles we have exported to Sweden are a product of TEMSATech as well.”

Sharing information and their targets, Tolga Kaan Doğancıoğlu said: “We aim to meet over half of our total bus volume, with electric vehicles by 2025. We allocate around four percent of our turnover to R&D every year. We envision the share of exports in our electric vehicles will reach about 80 percent. When it comes to the short term, we are planning to reach a business volume that is 2-3 times larger than the previous year.”

Pictured (left to right) TEMSA CEO Tolga Kaan Dogancioglu, Industry SBU President of Sabancı Holding and Chairman of the Board of Directors of TEMSA.