Four bus prototypes are to be made in Sakana this year and early next year, and production of new buses is expected to start in May 2024. According to Sunsunsundegi, 420 buses per year will be assembled for Volvo and, taking into account the other customers, a total of about 800 will leave the workshop.
The plant will have 281 jobs by the end of the year and hopes to reach 737 workers by 2028. The public company Sodena of the Government of Navarra has been working with Sunsudegi since 2010. Because of his bad situation, he took over the company for three years and then sold it to the management and staff. News Journal has announced that Sodena currently has EUR 39 million invested in the company of Alsasua.
If the forecasts were met, this would be significant data, considering that in 2022 the sale of buses and trucks decreased by 15.1% in Europe, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association. Of the five major authors, France (17.7%), the United Kingdom (17.6%) and Spain (16.7%) are the ones that most backtrack. In Europe in 2022, two million buses and trucks were built.
The car market is also shrinking in recent years and there is a major setback in the future, not least because so many electric cars cannot be produced or bought. However, in the case of buses it is different, if individual transport is expected to lose strength, collective transport will gain strength. The bus can therefore be a transport of the future, especially if hydrogen is known to be used as energy for this type of transport.