European EV-maker Volta Trucks has returned from the Arctic Circle, where it tested its medium-duty battery-electric delivery truck scheduled to begin production this year. The winter weather testing in northern Sweden showed off the Volta Zero’s durability, the company announced on March 17.
Engineers from the Swedish startup evaluated the Volta Zero, a 16-tonne (35,274 lb.) truck, under various harsh winter conditions that included the pre-conditioning and thermal stability of the battery, interior thermal comfort, defrosting and demisting of the cabin, and driving traction with different levels of grip and mileage accumulation with varying cargo weights. Air temperatures during the tests dropped as low as minus-22 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-30 Celsius).
See also: Volta Trucks plans initial production of new concept urban delivery vehicle
“The completion of our winter testing program is another major milestone in our journey towards the start of production of the Volta Zero,” said Ian Collins, Volta chief product officer. “In developing the world’s first purpose-built full-electric medium-duty truck, we are encountering many challenges for the first time, and needing to understand and resolve those challenges quickly to get the vehicle to market at the pace our customer’s demand.”
Created by Astheimer Design in Warwick, U.K., the Zero looks like a U.S. city bus. The company has previously touted its design, which offers drivers an improved working area and better field of view from a central driving position in the cab. The company said that the Zero’s battery would deliver 95 to 125 miles on a full charge.
During its Arctic Circle testing, Volta said it used “state-of-the-art tools” to ensure consistent communication across multiple simultaneous test activities.
“It’s unlikely that customers in our launch markets of London and Paris will experience such conditions, but we need to push the vehicle to the extremes to ensure we deliver the highest levels of quality and reliability from the very first customer vehicles produced,” Collins said.
Global logistics company DB Schenker ordered 1,470 Zeros in late 2021; Petit Forestier, a European reefer fleet, ordered 1,000 Voltas. These are among the nearly 5,000 orders the company has received, a value of about 1.2 billion euro ($1.33 billion).
Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, Volta’s engineering team is based in the U.K. The trucks are manufactured in Steyr, Austria.
