Swedish electric truck start up, Volta has announced a successful and oversubscribed conclusion of its latest Series C funding round raising $AUD361.4 million (€230 million in capital) again demonstrating the willingness of investors to embrace zero emission vehicle start ups.
The Company says that this latest capital raising will fund all of its engineering and business operations through until after the start of series production of its 16-tonne full-electric Volta Zero at the end of 2022.
The company says that this includes the completion of a fleet of design verification prototypes for engineering development and testing, as well as a fleet of product verification vehicles that will be evaluated by customers in London and Paris in mid-2022.
Volta claims it will also fund the continued development of the recently confirmed 7.5- and 12-tonne full-electric Volta Zero derivatives, as well as for preparing the company’s contract manufacturing facility at Steyr in Austria, where it will start production of customer vehicles by the end of the year.
In 2023, during the company’s first year of series production, it has production plans for 5,000 vehicles, increasing to 14,000 trucks in 2024 and up to 27,000 vehicles in 2025 it claims.
By this time, the company says it will be operational across Europe as well as the US, with a portfolio of four Volta Zero models in production, including 7.5-, 12-, 16- and 18-tonne variants.
Supporting these volume expectations are significant customer contracts the company has announced, including the recent announcement of Europe’s largest order of full-electric trucks from DB Schenker, which ordered nearly 1,500 vehicles.
This, and other pre-orders have taken the Volta Trucks orderbook to more than 5,000 vehicles, with a claimed order value of over $AUD1.8 million (€1.2 billion).
“The successful and oversubscribed conclusion of our Series C funding round gives us a positive external validation of our journey,” said Volta Trucks CEO, Essa Al-Saleh.
