Volta Trucks has laid out its Road-to-Zero emissions strategy, with a commercial, product and manufacturing road map extending to 2025.
Volta Trucks Ready to Decarbonise the Logistics Industry
Volta Trucks has announced their exciting Road-to-Zero emissions strategy, with a focus on decarbonising the logistics industry. The news comes at a crucial time for the industry, with the recent news that diesel-engine commercial vehicles will be banned from operating in Paris from 2024, whilst all French cities of more than 150,000 residents will also adopt new Low Emission Zones. Volta Trucks’ independent research suggests that the total global addressable market for full-electric trucks in the 7.5t – 19t category will exceed $100 billion by the end of 2025. With speed to market at the heart of the strategy, Volta Trucks will offer a wide range of full-electric commercial vehicles at a time of scarce supplies of comparable full electric vehicles from new start-ups and the established vehicle manufacturers.
Four Full-Electric Volta Commercial Vehicles by 2025
Extending on the success of the Volta Zero – the first purpose-built full-electric 16-tonne commercial vehicle designed for inner-city last-mile deliveries – Volta Trucks has decided 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 Company will offer a comprehensive range of full-electric commercial vehicles that have been reimagined and redesigned thanks to their innovative, compact electric powertrains created by logistics experts for the logistics industry.
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 Volta Zero vehicle is currently in the engineering development phase, with early prototype testing due to start shortly.
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 commencing in late 2024. These vehicles are within the development stage.
All Volva trucks will adopt the innovative low-seat central driving position with a glasshouse-style cab to offer best-in-class vehicle safety. This offers 220-degrees of visibility to maximise visual communication between the driver and vulnerable road users around the vehicle. Also, like the 16-tonne vehicle, all variants will be designed with optimised payloads, thus offering fleet managers the opportunity of using a reduced number of larger Volta Zero vehicles, and removing several smaller vans from their operations, thereby also having a positive effect on inner-city traffic congestion.
Sales Volumes Predicted to Accelerate Past 27,000 from 2025, with International Strategy
Since the Volta Zero was launched in September 2020, fleet managers and city legislators have been enthusiastic about the model, with the vehicle extending beyond the initial London and Paris markets. 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 U.S. and Asian cities. 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 end of the year. Volta Trucks expects to introduce the Volta Zero in all its four weight variants across all its core markets, by selling more than 27,000 units per year by the end of 2025, with volumes increasing further in the following years.
Demand has also been accelerated by Volta Trucks’ unique Truck as a Service (“TaaS”) proposition that aims to revolutionise the financing and servicing of commercial vehicle fleets. TaaS will offer fleet managers a frictionless way to electrify their fleets, with a single, affordable, monthly fee providing access to a full-electric Volta Zero, and all of its servicing, maintenance, insurance and training requirements. It will even provide a replacement Volta Zero when needed, maximising the uptime and operational efficiency of the vehicle.
Volta Zero production to be close to its core markets, with options already confirmed.
Given its sustainability ambitions, Volta Trucks will adopt a network manufacturing strategy with several assembly facilities distributed across its key geographies, minimising unnecessary transportation and cost. The Company is considering additional manufacturing locations across Europe, North America and Asia, to have the capacity to meet the significant sales increase expected by the company.
Announcing the company’s ambitious Road-to-Zero Emissions strategy, Chief Executive Officer of Volta Trucks, Essa Al-Saleh, said:
“We have seen huge success since launching the 16-tonne Volta Zero in September 2020. We have significant tailwinds 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.
Given our pace of development, driven by customer demand, we 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. I’m pleased that recently, we expressed an interest in building Volta Zeros in Barcelona and are also investigating several other facilities in Europe, Asia and North America to ensure we can keep up with demand.”
