Electric 16-tonner reimagines city delivery truck

Start-up fully electric goods vehicle manufacturer Volta Trucks, which has offices in Britain and Sweden, has unveiled what it calls the world’s first purpose-built fully electric 16-tonne inner-city freight delivery vehicle.

Designed from the ground up with an operating pure-electric range of 150km to 200km, the Volta Zero is estimated to eliminate 180,000 tonnes of CO2 from city centre atmospheres by 2025.

Volta is building the first prototype Zero which it will launch later this year, and the first pilot test vehicles are due to start evaluation with customers in the first quarter of 2021.

It has partnered with Prodrive, Astheimer and Magtec to develop the design.

Removing the traditional internal combustion engine has allowed a complete rethink and redesign with “a clear focus on the safety of the Zero’s driver and all other road users”, Volta says.

The driver sits centrally with a wide 220-degrees of direct vision around the vehicle through a glasshouse-style cab.

Rear-view cameras replace traditional mirrors, a 360-degree bird’s-eye camera shows the driver the complete area around the truck, and blind-spot warning systems detect objects on the sides.

The electric powerplant allows the driver to sit far lower than in a conventional truck, with the eye-line around 1.8 metres. Volta says that mirrors the height of pedestrians and other road users in close proximity.

The lower cab height and seating position provide easy ingress and egress, and the open and simplified cab comes with a contemporary, uncluttered dashboard and driver information interface.

A central display conveys critical information and touch-screens on each side are used for lights, climate control, navigation and trip planning, communication, and in-cab media.

The Zero will also have Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) to help driving, manoeuvring and parking.

Lightweight, high-strength carbon fibre is used for the structural windscreen surround but most of the cab’s external body panels are made from sustainable natural flax fibre composite material.

Volta says the near-carbon neutral flax composite body panels will bend, reshape, and ultimately snap, unlike carbon fibre that shatters.

And it says that simulations have shown that should an incident occur, thanks to the cab’s inner metal spaceframe structure, the use of hybrid composite body panels has the same crash and safety performance as conventional steel material.

“Safety is at the heart of the Volta brand for one simple reason,” says company founder Carl-Magnus Norden. “In London, as an example, 23% of pedestrian fatalities and 58% of cyclist deaths involve an HGV, yet large trucks only account for 4% of road miles.

“This is clearly unacceptable and must change. The Volta Zero completely reimagines the commercial vehicle, ensuring it can operate safely with all road users and become a friend of the zero-emission city.”