Could This Company Be The Tesla Of Trucks?

Electric vehicle sales have been exploding, particularly in Europe. But most of the attention has been on passenger cars. Commercial vehicles also contribute to the greenhouse gas and city air quality issues the world is facing. Anglo-Swedish startup Volta Trucks reckons it has the answer in the shape of the Volta Zero, a truck built from the ground up as electric. But its EV plan is about more than just emissions.

Electrification isn’t seen as the end goal for Volta Trucks, but more of a means to an end, with the overall aim being an improvement in city environments, including health and safety. In London, for example, according to Transport for London, only 4% of city miles are travelled by trucks. But 26% of pedestrian fatalities and 78% of cyclist fatalities are attributed to them. The figures are unlikely to be much different in other cities around the world. So alongside rethinking the drivetrain technology to reduce emissions, Volta Trucks also wanted to radically redesign how its vehicles interact with other road users, to make them safer.

The initial Volta Zero will be in the 16-ton class, but there will be 7.5-ton, 12-ton and 18-ton variants too (the 18-ton version was initially announced as 19-ton). But they will be based around the same platform. Where most electric trucks in this class have been built from existing designs with EV drivetrains shoehorned in, Volta Trucks decided that electrification could enable a radical change in design, with safety benefits.

The most obvious difference when you look at the Volta Zero is the cab. This is much lower down, with just a small step up to get inside, like a bus. Conventional trucks have the engine at the front, and the cab on top of that, so the driver sits up high. This might be great for long-distance road visibility, but it’s terrible for seeing closer objects like nearby pedestrians and cyclists. It’s a major reason for the high fatalities from trucks in cities – there is no connection between drivers and other road users at eye level, and it’s usually impossible to see down the sides properly.

The Volta Zero also places the driver in the center, with two passenger seats either side further back. Cameras are used to give a clear view all around the vehicle, although conventional wing mirrors are also included as a failsafe. The huge wraparound windscreen provides a wide view out the front, too. So the driver can see everything around them, allowing them to avoid hitting pedestrians and cyclists. The driver can also exit the vehicle on either side through doors that use train technology. They slide open rather than being on hinges, so don’t swing out into the road or pavement when the driver needs to get out. Since the driver can get out either side, they will never have to get out into traffic either.

The EV drivetrain is what allows this redesign, and parallels buses. The latter can have the motor at the back, so passengers can enter through the front at near ground level. The motor can’t be at the back in a conventional fossil-fueled delivery truck, though, because that would then make the rear cargo area too high. Electric motors, which Volta Trucks is getting from Meritor, are much smaller and can be integrated into the axle, so they can sit right between the two rear wheels.

Volta Trucks has also placed its battery, which can be up to 200kWh, in the middle of the chassis rails for safety. Lots of conversions using preexisting designs place the batteries on the side, where they are vulnerable in an accident. The battery is temperature controlled for optimum performance, with testing already completed at -30C (-22F). The truck range is only up to 125 miles, but that will be more than enough for a typical last mile daily delivery route and could eliminate 180,000 tons of CO2 by 2025.

Another innovation Volta has proposed is “Truck as a Service”, which is designed to package everything including charging, maintenance, and insurance into a rental-like operational cost rather than one-off capital purchase. This is meant to make the adoption of unfamiliar technology easier for customers used to a conventional truck model, smoothing the transition.

On the other hand, although Volta Trucks has redesigned its Zero from the ground up, it has chosen to keep its manufacturing ethos as close to traditional as possible, to speed up time to market. Even more disruptive companies working in this area like Arrival are innovating production, too, and are likely to take longer to achieve volume than Volta Trucks as a result. Prototype Zeros are already being tested around the world and the first production vehicles are expected to ship to customers at the end of 2022. This would be a great achievement considering the founder, Carl-Magnus Norden, came up with the idea around 2016 and the company has existed for less than two years.

Calling any company “the Tesla of trucks” might seem a little inaccurate when Tesla itself is also making trucks. But neither the Cybertruck nor the Semi play in the same market as the Volta Zero. The Cybertruck is a pickup, and the Semi is designed to pull a trailer for a long haul. The Volta Zero, in contrast, is aimed at metropolitan deliveries – moving goods from a warehouse to local supermarkets, delivering perishables to a chain of restaurants, or shifting products from local depot to retail outlet. There will be two basic variants – one for any cargo, and one including refrigeration. This is not a market Tesla is currently addressing, but arguably it’s one of the most important due to the need to reduce urban pollution and increase road safety, as mentioned above.

Volta Trucks isn’t the only company tackling this problem. The aforementioned Arrival is in a similar space and has already secured an order for 10,000 vehicles from UPS. But the Volta Zero is bigger, and with so much demand for electrification across a global market, there’s room for lots of players. Volta Trucks is one of the most promising ones, and has a unique realization that improving our urban lives isn’t just about the climate and quality of air that we breathe, but also the safety of other road users. The Volta Zero also happens to look incredibly cool and is likely to be a much nicer place to work inside for a day than current trucks. Although Volta Trucks is only targeting producing 27,000 units a year by 2025, which isn’t exactly Tesla volumes, it could have a similarly real impact on our quality of life.