Not quite a month after Lippert Components acquired Trans/Air Manufacturing, the company announced it is adding Freedman Seating Company to its school transportation portfolio.

Lippert, a subsidiary of LCI Industries, announced Tuesday it acquired all the business assets of Freedman, an Illinois-based manufacturer of transportation seating solutions. The terms of the deal were not disclosed at this report.

Freedman has been a family-owned company since 1884, providing a variety of seating solutions to the bus, rail, marine, delivery truck, specialty and commercial vehicle markets. Following the acquisition, a press release states the seating operations will continue out of Chicago for the foreseeable future.

Dan Cohen, president of Freedman, told School Transportation News that over the years, many companies have expressed interest in acquiring Freedman Seating.

“We’ve always listened, but we’ve been very deliberate about saying no when it didn’t feel like the right fit,” he said. “It was never just about selling the business. It was about finding a partner who shares our business values, who respects the culture we’ve built and who sees the same potential in our people and products. After thoughtful conversations and a lot of due diligence, we’re excited we’ve found that partner in Lippert. This acquisition gives us the opportunity to build on our legacy, expand our reach and invest even more in our team.”

Cohen said Lippert shares many of the same principles that have guided Freedman for generations. These principles include a focus on quality, long-term growth and putting people first. Lippert is also a family-owned business dating to 1959.

“Under their umbrella, we’ll have greater resources to pursue new markets, improve customer experience and develop new products, all while continuing to invest in the incredible people that made this possible,” he continued.

---

Related: Trans/Air Says Acquisition a Strategic Business, Culture Move for Family-Run Company
Related: Infrastructure Investor I Squared to Acquire National Express School Bus Contractors
Related: Quebec Government Passes on Saving Lion Electric, Company’s End Appears Imminent

---

Cohen noted that for the most part, Freedman will do business as usual. There will be title changes due to the corporate structure, but the entire management team is staying on with Lippert.

“Customers should expect to receive the same great quality and service they have for over 130 years with new benefits coming from our being part of a larger organization with greater resources,” Cohen added.

Meanwhile, Ryan Smith, group president of Lippert’s North American OEM operations, said in a press release that Freedman is a welcome addition to the Lippert family.

“Between the two companies, we have almost 200 years combined of family leadership and there’s not too many organizations that can claim that,” he continued. “We’re excited to add Freedman’s seating line to our growing portfolio of bus and transportation vehicle products and with our combined leadership teams we will be able to offer a better-than-ever customer experience to our partners in these industries.”

The post Lippert Grows School Transportation Reach with Acquisition of Freedman Seating appeared first on School Transportation News.

Party hats were compulsory headgear at VW’s Zwickau plant in eastern Germany this week. The factory produces six different EVs for various VW Group brands and just built its millionth electric car, an ID.3 GTX hot hatch. But Zwickau’s busy production lines are causing a headache for the bean counters at VW’s Wolfsburg HQ.

The problem is that EVs are expensive to build and deliver smaller margins than equivalent combustion-powered cars. And while electric sales doubling in Europe in the first quarter of 2025 is something to celebrate, some of those sales come at the expense of ICE sales.

Related: VW ID.2 Might Have A Shot In America, But ID.1 Is ‘Highly Unlikely’

As EVs take up a greater proportion of the sales mix – they accounted for one in five VW Group cars in Jan-March – they push profitability down, reducing the margin to 4 percent. And the withdrawal of EV subsidies in many European countries means VW can’t lean on government incentives to allow them to charge more.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel in the form of the VW ID.2 and its various spinoffs and related EVs. The €25k ($28k) ID.2, which will be built in Spain, goes on sale in 2026 and should be one of the first Western-built EVs to return margins close to an ICE car’s. The baby VW and its sister SUV, plus the Cupra Raval and Skoda Epiq use a new front-wheel drive version of the MEB platform that costs less to produce.

Earlier this month VW revealed that earnings before tax were down 40 percent to €3.1 billion ($3.5 bn) in Q1 even as deliveries increased by 1.4 percent. The company’s finance chief Arno Antlitz partly attributes this to EVs taking a bigger slice of the sales pie.

But President Trump’s tariffs threaten to throw an even bigger spanner in the VW Group’s plans. The constantly-changing US import tariff situation is making it harder for automaker to make financial forecasts for the rest of the year, but VW, which is badly exposed due to Audi and Porsche’s lack of US production sites, has already downgraded primed investors to expect a less successful year than previously anticipated.

As most major European automakers dive head-first into the world of EVs, it seemed inevitable Seat would quickly follow suit. After all, Cupra, which was formed out of Seat, has been selling the all-electric Born for a couple of years and has recently launched the electric Tavascan SUV. However, the boss of Seat and Cupra says the former will not release an EV this decade.

According to Wayne Griffiths, “Seat at the moment is in a good place,” and the company doesn’t appear willing to potentially interrupt its momentum with a new EV. In 2024, sales increased by 7.5% to 310,000 units. Despite this, Griffiths did acknowledge that, “for Seat to have a certain future, we need to have an electric future.”

Read: 2024 Seat Leon Drops 3-Cylinder Engine, Gains Upgraded PHEV And New Screens

Had the Cupra brand not been transformed from the company’s in-house performance division into its own brand, Seat could have launched a re-badged version of the VW ID.3 for itself. Speaking with Autocar, Griffiths said Seat could “consider” a model based on the VW ID.1 as its first EV, but no final decision has been made at this stage, meaning the Spanish brand is officially not working on an EV until 2030.

Only time will tell if not launching an EV until after 2030 will hurt Seat. Sales of EVs soared to new heights in 2024, and while there have been a few hiccups, sales will likely smash records this year, too. Fortunately, Seat isn’t solely relying on traditional ICE-powered models, and does currently sell traditional hybrid and plug-in hybrid versions of the Leon hatch and Leon Sportstourer. Both of these models offer over 74 miles (120 km) of all-electric driving range.

Regardless of what the brand’s first EV is, Griffiths said that it “would need to be profitable,” as for “Seat as a company, we are looking to make money now and invest.”