Stockholm, Sweden: Volta Trucks is to launch four electric trucks and is targeting over 27,000 vehicle sales per year.
The trucks, from 7.5 to 19 tonnes, will be sold in Europe with a city-specific strategy, followed by North American and Asian markets by 2025.
The 16-tonne Volta Zero will be the first vehicle delivered, with Pilot Fleet trucks built by the end of 2021, and series production starting around 12 months afterwards. This vehicle is currently in the engineering development phase, with early prototype testing due to start shortly, Volta says.
Production of the 16-tonne vehicle will be closely followed by the largest 19-tonne and mid-size 12-tonne variants in 2023. A Pilot Fleet of the smaller 7.5-tonne vehicles is expected to be launched for customer trials in the same year, with production beginning in late 2024. These later vehicles are currently in the early design development phase.
With the company’s clear focus on best-in-class vehicle safety with features for the driver and the surrounding ecosystem, all trucks will adopt a low-seat central driving position with a glasshouse-style cab.
The Volta Zero was launched in September 2020. That year, Petit Forestier took 1,000 Volta Zeros for its refrigerated commercial rental fleet.
Given the strength of market demand for the 16-tonne Volta Zero, Volta Trucks will accelerate its market entry with a Europe-first strategy, followed by US and Asian cities, it says.
The Volta Zero was initially launched in the UK and France and is currently in Spain for a tailored roadshow with customers. Afterwards, it will be presented in Germany and North America over the summer, with other European markets including Netherlands, Italy, and Belgium to be confirmed by year end.
Volta Trucks expects to introduce the Volta Zero in all its four weight variants across all its core markets. The company is considering a number of additional manufacturing locations in Europe, North America and Asia, to have the capacity to meet the significant volume ramp up envisaged with its plan.
Essa Al-Saleh, chief executive, Volta Trucks, said: “We have seen huge success since launching the 16-tonne Volta Zero in September 2020. We have significant tail winds with zero emission large commercial vehicles, thanks to forthcoming legislation changes that are driving demand, as well as many customers with uncompromising sustainability agendas wanting to purchase the most environmentally focused vehicles for their fleets. This has created a very strong order book that encourages us to rapidly accelerate our plans.
“When we launched the Volta Zero, we’d expected to be selling 5,000 vehicles a year with a single model by 2025. Given our pace of development, driven by customer demand, we clearly see the opportunity to expand the Volta Zero into a portfolio of vehicles to offer customers a wider selection of full-electric vehicle sizes, and to accelerate the change to zero emissions.
Carl-Magnus Norden, founder and chairman, Volta Trucks, said: “When we created the company, we originally set out to decarbonise logistics operations, and to make city centres safer and more sustainable places to live and work in. But we originally believed that we couldn’t achieve this objective by ourselves, and we strongly encouraged other manufacturers on their journeys towards zero emissions.
“Over the past months though, we’ve seen unprecedented demand in the marketplace, confirming that our ambition resonates well with our customers, but we’ve also seen very few other start-ups or OEMs announcing new fully electric commercial vehicles in the medium and lower-heavy duty sectors. On this basis, we will have to deliver more of the decarbonisation of the logistics industry ourselves, and the launch of four separate fully electric commercial vehicles targeting more than 27,000 truck sales per year by 2025, just three years after starting production, is a very strong statement of intent to deliver on our original vision.”
