Electric commercial vehicle manufacturer Volta Trucks has announced its ‘Road-to-Zero Emissions’ strategy, which includes new models, manufacturing facilities, and over 27,000 vehicle sales per year across expanded markets by 2025.
Building on the Volta Zero – a purpose-built all-electric 16-tonne commercial vehicle designed for inner-city last-mile deliveries – Volta Trucks plans to expand its product portfolio with three additional variants within the medium- to lower end of the heavy-duty class, with Volta Zero models available in the 7.5-tonne, 12-tonne, 16-tonne and 19-tonne weight categories.
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. The vehicle is currently in the engineering development phase, with early prototype testing due to start shortly.
Production of the 16-tonne vehicle will be followed by the 19-tonne and 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 commencing in late 2024. These later vehicles are currently in the early design development phase.
All variants will adopt the same low-seat central driving position with a glasshouse-style cab and be designed with optimised payloads.
At the end of 2020, Volta Trucks announced what was believed to be Europe’s single largest purchase of full-electric large commercial vehicles with the sale of 1,000 Volta Zeros to Petit Forestier, one of Europe’s largest refrigerated commercial rental fleets.
Volta Trucks said it now plans to accelerate its market entry with a Europe-first strategy, followed by US and Asian cities.
Volta Trucks said it expects to sell more than 27,000 units in all four weight variants across all core markets per year by the end of 2025, with volumes increasing further in the following years.
Carl-Magnus Norden, founder and executive chairman of 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.
“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.”
In addition, Volta Trucks has announced its Truck-as-a-Service (TaaS) proposition, which is designed to offer fleet managers access to a Volta Zero, as well as all of its servicing, maintenance, insurance and training requirements, via a single monthly fee. TaaS will also provide a replacement Volta Zero when needed.
Furthermore, the company said it plans adopt a network manufacturing strategy with a number of assembly facilities distributed across its key geographies, minimising transportation and cost.
Volta recently announced it had “expressed an interest” in manufacturing vehicles at the Decarbonisation Hub project in the former Nissan manufacturing facilities in Barcelona.
Any vehicles manufactured in Spain could potentially serve southern European markets but would not be the first vehicles built.
The company is said to be currently considering a number of additional manufacturing locations across Europe, North America and Asia, to have the capacity to meet future volumes.
