June 27, 2018 Vol. 15 No. 13

I’m itching to write about something hard and even greasy — maybe wheel bearings, brakes, like that — but the electric phenomenon is utterly dominant. Not much new on the hard-metal front anyway, so here we go with volts and such. Yet again.

Following hot on the heels of news about Daimler Trucks North America’s launch of two fully electric Freightliner trucks — the new eCascadia and, for the medium-duty segment, the eM2 106 — we saw Volvo go seriously electric too. The FL cabover, and its counterpart the FE, will both be electrified for the European market beginning next year.

The company has announced that it will focus initially on refuse and urban distribution applications. Volvo has already produced about 4000 electric-hybrid and battery-electric buses, and the trucks and buses will share many underlying technologies such as electric motors and charging systems.

The equipment is also part of a broader environmental strategy – being showcased in Sweden as ElectriCity – that sees battery power as one of the solutions to challenges as diverse as climate change and noise.

“We’re not just launching a new truck model. It’s an opportunity to address these challenges,” said Anna Thorden, product manager, electromobility, during the launch in Goteborg, Sweden.

AND WHAT ABOUT NORTH AMERICA? Well, don’t hold your breath, but Volvo will go electric here too at some point.

“Volvo Trucks is convinced that electrification will play an increasingly important commercial and social role in the future, starting with urban transportation where we will see greater concentrations of vehicles and other equipment that can be powered by electricity,” said Magnus Koeck, Volvo Trucks North America’s vice-president of marketing and brand management. “This technology is maturing quickly, and we will eventually test Volvo’s electric truck offering in North American customer applications to validate how customer operations and duty cycles are best served by the technology.