Electric truck start-up Volta Trucks is picking up speed with successful customer operational tests across Europe and an innovative micro-hub last-mile delivery partnership.
The company’s Volta Zero is the world’s first purpose-built full-electric 16-tonne vehicle designed for urban logistics, reducing the environmental impact of freight deliveries in city centres. It will have an operating pure-electric range of 150 – 200 kms.
H&M deliveries
The full-electric commercial vehicle manufacturer is teaming up with Cake, a Swedish maker of premium lightweight, electric motorcycles, to offer a mobile micro-hub solution aimed at decarbonising and decongesting last mile deliveries, while also improving service to end customers.
The first trial, planned in Q1 2023 in Paris, will be with the H&M Group. The companies want to provide a “fully integrated, zero tailpipe emission” delivery service from warehouse to end customer, using the most efficient combination of electric trucks and electric two wheelers.
Mobile micro-hub
Free to operate in the world’s most rigorous zero-emission zones, the capacious Volta Zero will act as a mobile micro hub, or mini warehouse. Cake’s electric motorcycles will be loaded into the Volta Zero from the distribution centre at the start of the working day and deployed into the city centre.
From there, the Cake electric motorcycles will deliver the last mile of parcels to customers in the fastest and most sustainable way, without impacting the traffic, or struggling with parking.
The Volta Zero is free to redeploy to other locations throughout the day or to provide quick-replacement batteries for the Cake motorcycles if necessary, providing an efficient city-wide coverage for deliveries.
Innovative last-mile deliveries
Essa Al-Saleh, CEO of Volta Trucks, said: “We’ve designed the full-electric Volta Zero to be the cleanest, safest and most efficient urban delivery vehicle. Most of our customers are using trucks to deliver from out-of-town warehouses to inner city stores. But as a forward-thinking brand, we’ve always sought innovative partners to deliver new and industry-redefining solutions.
“The partnership between Volta Trucks and Cake will showcase how a combination of zero tailpipe emission transport solutions can bring benefit to brands and customers, such as the H&M Group, and city centre environments.”
Stefan Ytterborn, founder and CEO of Cake, continued: “As the majority of today’s last-mile delivery chains will soon be banned in many of the world’s largest cities, world-leading e-commerce consumer brands need to engage in future-proof concepts now.
“Solutions need to be developed to offer lower emissions and less congestion, while benefiting from far more efficient deliveries all the way to the end customer. This innovative mobility ecosystem that the three brands are trialling is setting a clear direction for both healthier cities and business advantages.”
Volta Zero customer tests
Meanwhile, Volta Trucks has completed the first customer driving evaluations of the 16-tonne Volta Zero Design Verification prototype in its European launch markets, giving customers their first experience of the zero-tailpipe emission medium-duty truck designed for urban logistics, providing a real-world understanding of the vehicle’s performance, world-first driver-centric cab and innovative safety features.
The evaluations, undertaken on proving grounds in Paris, Madrid, Milan, Selm in Germany and Millbrook, England, are the company’s latest milestones on its accelerated journey to bring zero-tailpipe emission trucks to market at industry-leading pace. With over 1,500 test drives from organisations and international media, the feedback from the evaluation activities will be integrated into the future product roadmap, with next-generation Production Verification prototype vehicles already now driving off the production line at the company’s contract manufacturing facility in Steyr, Austria.
DPD UK tests
In the UK, DPD carried out tests with the Design Verification prototype vehicle at its Hinckley Superhub in Leicestershire. DPD drivers were accompanied by Volta Trucks engineers and qualified drivers and tested the unloaded truck on a range of pre-determined routes including motorways, A-roads and urban centres.
Olly Craughan, Head of Sustainability at DPD UK, said: “It was fantastic to get our hands on a Volta Zero and put it through its paces, with our own drivers alongside Volta Trucks’ engineers. We had the truck for five days and it is very impressive. The Beta Trials are an opportunity for us to test the vehicle first-hand, while helping Volta Trucks see exactly how it performs in real-life scenarios and on typical routes.
“Working with the Volta Trucks team in the cab gave us a great insight into what they are doing and how the truck could fit into the fleet. Increasingly we are operating in low or zero-emission zones in major cities, so with micro-depots and all-electric city centre van fleets we have already transformed our urban delivery strategy. But there is a real need for bigger, green vehicles that can fit into that strategy.”
DPD’s aim is to be the most sustainable parcel delivery company in the UK and the company is on track to have over 3,000 electric vehicles (EVs) on the road this year and 4,000 by 2023, when it will be delivering to 30 towns and cities using electric vehicles only.
DB Schenker trials
In France, DB Schenker tested a Design Verification prototype Volta Zero on roads and in real distribution environments in Paris. The logistics company has pre-ordered nearly 1,500 full-electric Volta Zero vehicles to transport goods from its distribution hubs to the city centres and urban areas. The rollout will begin at 10 locations in five countries.
“Since the beginning of the cooperation between DB Schenker and Volta Trucks, we have been in close contact and continued to drive the development of the vehicle forward together,” said Cyrille Bonjean, Executive Vice President Land Transport at DB Schenker in Europe. “It was great to see the result live on the streets of Paris. It all started with an idea – now it’s a reality and we look forward to adding the first pilot vehicles to the fleet in Europe at the beginning of 2023.”
Siemens partnership
Separately, Volta Trucks and Siemens Smart Infrastructure have signed a letter of intent to provide comprehensive charging infrastructure and software to Volta Trucks customers, to simplify, de-risk, and accelerate their transition to commercial fleet electrification.
This includes software control systems, facility electrification, charging infrastructure, energy management, building equipment and project finance. The partnership will support Volta Trucks’ customers by providing infrastructure for full electrification aligned with their operational needs.
€60m extra funding
Finally, Volta Trucks has announced an extension of its earlier Series C funding round from February 2022, with an additional €60 million capital raise, on top of the previous €230 million. The round was supported by all current investors. This brings the total investment into the company to over €360 million to date.
The Series C Extension validates the company’s continued progress. Its accelerated engineering, testing and certification work continues apace ahead of the start of production of customer vehicles in Q1-2023. On the commercial side, the company currently has thousands of pre-orders for the full-electric Volta Zero.
European electric trucks
Volta Trucks was formed in 2019 in Sweden by co-founders Carl-Magnus Norden and Kjell Walöen. It has its head office in Stockholm, Sweden, but most of its business and engineering operations are undertaken in the UK, with sales teams across France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, and the UK.
Its contract manufacturing facility is in Steyr, Austria, where it started building ‘Production Verification’ prototypes in Summer 2022, ahead of the start of production of customer specification vehicles in early 2023. The company is also establishing a network of ‘Volta Trucks Hub’ service and maintenance facilities in its launch markets, with the first two already announced in Bonneuil-sur-Marne, to the south of Paris, and in Tottenham, London.
