After initial strong growth, some start-ups born to design and manufacture electric commercial vehicles are showing signs of significant strain, mainly due to liquidity shortages. This is the case for the German company Quantron, which risks closure if it does not secure new funding. The situation led the Augsburg Court to initiate provisional insolvency proceedings on October 29, 2024. Quantron was founded in 2019 as a spin-off from the Haller Group, a company with a long tradition in the transportation and agricultural machinery sector, whose history dates back to the late 19th century with the production of horse-drawn carriages.
Quantron began its operations by converting industrial vehicles from diesel to electric, a path taken by several other European companies. It later decided to take the leap into manufacturing buses and trucks designed and built in-house at a plant in Gersthofen. The first model was the 12-meter Cizaris city bus, designed to be powered by either batteries or hydrogen through fuel cells, with its design entrusted to the Italian Fabio Filippini. In the freight vehicle segment, the company developed the heavy-duty QHM and the medium-light QLI models (ranging from 3.5 to 7.5 tons), both available in battery and hydrogen versions.