Production Starts on Prototype Volta Electric Truck

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Volta Trucks has started production of the first road-going ‘Design Verification’ (DV) prototype Volta Zero* vehicle in Coventry, UK. The DV prototypes are the first full-electric Volta Zero commercial vehicles to be built in a production-ready design. A total of 25 vehicles will be manufactured.

When completed in January, the fleet will start a testing scheme. This will involve Volta Trucks engineers replicating a wide range of customer usage and delivery cycles, as well as taking the Volta Zero to the extremes of cold weather environments in the Arctic, hot weather in equatorial conditions, and crash testing,. This according to Volta will validate the safety, durability, and reliability of the vehicle. (Volta Trucks Fully-Electric Commercial Zero to Debut in Italy; Solid Power – More Money from BMW, Ford, Volta Energy Technologies for Solid-State EV Batteries)

The results of the DV testing program will be fed into the final prototype stage – ‘Production Verification’ (PV). The PV prototype vehicles will be built at the company’s new manufacturing plant in Steyr, Austria, in mid-2022. “Many of these production-specification prototypes will be lent to selected customers for extended periods to be tested in their real-world logistics conditions, undertaking millions of delivery kilometers, alongside Volta Trucks’ own engineers,” the startup company said.

“This is going to be far more condensed and intensive than a normal vehicle testing program, given our ambitious timeline to start series production in a year’s time, which is driven by customers’ needs for zero-emission trucks. This will take us to some of the hottest, coldest and most extreme conditions in the world, all to ensure that the production specification vehicles that roll off the production line by the end of 2022 deliver the highest possible quality standards and exceed our customers’ expectations,” said Ian Collins, Chief Product Officer of Volta Trucks.

*Volta Zero.
The Volta Zero claims to be the world’s first purpose-built full-electric 16-ton vehicle designed for inner-city logistics, reducing the environmental impact of freight deliveries in city centers. Designed from the ground up with an operating pure-electric range of 150 – 200 kms (95 – 125 miles), the Volta Zero will eliminate an estimated 1.2 million tons of CO₂ by 2025, Volta claims.