Former Volvo Australia boss Peter Voorhoeve, who is now president of Volvo Trucks North America, has signalled that the success of the company’s heavy duty electric truck trials in Southern California has shown enough market potential to start scaling production of the electric trucks at its manufacturing centre in Virginia by the end of this year.
Volvo is rolling out a fleet of 70 electric trucks this year with financial incentives and other funding from California environmental agencies supporting the program. The small fleet of battery-electric powered Volvo VNR heavy-duty trucks are operated by customers on routes that connect the giant Los Angeles port complex to inland distribution centres.
Peter Voorhoeve delivered a keynote speech for an Alternative Clean Transportation virtual educational series earlier this week, discussing what Volvo is learning from its initial tests of the trucks.
“Electromobility is happening right now as a number of key indicators illustrate. There is a push, both societal and environmental, and also growing customer demands,” Peter Voorhoeve said.
“Policies and incentives to accelerate electromobility are high on the agenda. Battery technology is progressing rapidly and industry investments are starting to heat up. Electric vehicles are part of our future.”
“We are harnessing our global electromobility development to secure a quick quality introduction of this technology,” he added.
Voorhoeve told the session that for the North American market, the company is using group technology to adapt to its regional haul model, the VNR.
“Rather than bringing an existing electric truck model from Europe, we transferred the electric driveline into our North American model, which was designed and developed here in the United States to meet our North American customers’ specific needs, and we have optimised the technology to work into conditions our drivers face here, and we build all of these trucks in the United States,” he said.
“We must ensure that the electromobility is a financially viable and sustainable option, that means incentivising the purchase of electric vehicles and funding the development of a robust charging infrastructure.”
We have gained important information on how to prepare for serial production at our Volvo trucks plant. We have examined data from the tricks to optimize their performance in real-world conditions. We have demonstrated the VNR’s electric capabilities to our customer partners and verified our algorithms for energy management. We have gained insights into the logistics of charging vehicles, and we have learned how we can fine-tune our supporting tools.
He revealed that truck operation has been working together with Volvo’s financial services to test new business models, including full-service lease solutions to further enhance the ease of operations.
“We’ve gained experience to help guide fleets as they embark down this unpaved path towards electrification. For example, we’ve gathered insight into the details of developing and installing infrastructure for heavy-duty vehicles, including utility regulations and processes that can complicate installation time,” he added.
He said that the company has learned that it is important for fleets to engage utilities and local officials very early in the process of acquiring electric trucks and also learned that when you public funding is used, you want to work far in advance and thoroughly do your research.
“We’ve discovered that having a dedicated electromobility point of contact in your organization is not only very helpful, but is really key to the process.
“Interest is high for zero-emission vehicles, but it will be essential to apply the knowledge gained by early adopters to ensure that sufficient resources and supportive policies bolster their success in the marketplace.
“The transition to zero-emissions vehicles will be a paradigm shift requiring greater interdependence among fleets, utilities, truck, and policymakers and incentives to encourage the expansion of the electric vehicle population will be absolutely critical,” Voorhoeve concluded.
