Volta to bring electric trucks to North American market
European electric truck maker Volta Trucks has announced plans to bring its trucks to the North American market.
It will show its vehicle in the U.S. for the first time at the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo (ACT Expo) May 1-4, as it develops its plan to launch in the U.S.
The North American rollout will begin with Classes 6 and 7 Volta Zero trucks, with fleet testing to begin later this year, initially on the U.S. West Coast. The truck maker said its production vehicles will be released to the North American market next year.
The truck is designed for urban applications, and features an e-axle with electric motor and transmission built into the axle that’s supplied by Cummins’ Accelera. Batteries from California-based Proterra will be mounted within the chassis rails.
Range of the 15-ton Volta Zero will be 95-125 miles (152-200 km). The company said a Class 5 version will follow. It plans to supply the trucks through a ‘Truck-as-a-Service’ model, offering the truck and all related service, maintenance, financing, insurance, and training for a single monthly fee.
Volta Trucks Hubs will be rolled out in the U.S. for service and maintenance.
“We’re building on the key learnings from our European launch, where we’ve developed at speed and scale, with deep understanding of our customers’ needs, to accelerate the transition to electric commercial vehicles and help decarbonize city centers,” Essa Al-Saleh, CEO of Volta Trucks, said in a release. “The U.S. faces the same safety and sustainability issues we are addressing in Europe and is a significant market opportunity for us. This marks the start of our journey in the U.S., and we are excited to bring road-certified vehicles for U.S. customers to evaluate later this year.”
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i do appreciate the plug in electric trucks and the advancements in the market – how ever i do not understand why there is a block by the governments to not allow diesel electric trucks on the road or the funding for that as well. to me seeing the diesel electric truck makes total sense for todays world. We have a very good diesel infrastructure and not a good electric infrastructure. We have good electric components – wheel end drives – re-gen wheel end drives – good batteries and great electronics to support them. We also have some great small diesel motors – in refers – that can totally support the charging of the batteries – but we just do not seem to have a large # of manufactures producing these type of trucks for today and future markets. Maybe it is time for the trucking industry its self to step up and say to the governments, the R&D funding money needs to go to this type of engineering . Give us something to look forward to for today – ( put ‘0’ sulfur diesel on the market in these type of trucks and then we have something that we can work with – “0” diesel emissions and an electric drive that works )