Volta Trucks has completed the first customer driving evaluations of the Volta Zero Design Verification prototype in the company’s European launch markets. These events gave customers their first experience of the zero-tailpipe emission medium-duty truck designed for urban logistics, providing a real-world understanding of the vehicle’s performance, driver-centric cab and innovative safety features.
The evaluations, undertaken on proving grounds in Paris, Madrid, Milan, Selm in Germany, and Millbrook in England, are the company’s latest milestones on its accelerated journey to bring zero-tailpipe emission trucks to market. With over 1,500 test drives from organizations and international media, the feedback from the evaluation activities will be integrated into the future product roadmap, with next-generation Production Verification prototype vehicles already now driving off the production line at the company’s contract manufacturing facility in Steyr, Austria.
Volta Trucks and Siemens Smart Infrastructure have signed a letter of intent, outlining a cooperation to deliver comprehensive charging infrastructure and software to Volta Trucks customers, to simplify, de-risk and accelerate their transition to commercial fleet electrification.
The strategic partnership looks to bring together Volta Trucks’ solution to commercial vehicle fleet electrification and operational expertise through its Truck as a Service offer, and Siemens’ global experience in electric vehicle support solutions. This includes software control systems, facility electrification, charging infrastructure, energy management, building equipment and project finance. The partnership will support Volta Trucks’ customers by providing infrastructure for full electrification aligned with their operational needs.
Volta Trucks has announced an extension of its earlier Series C funding round from February 2022, with an additional €60 million capital raise, on top of the previous €230 million. The round was supported by all current investors. This brings the total investment into the company to over €360 million to date.
The Series C Extension validates the company’s continued progress. Its accelerated engineering, testing and certification work continues apace ahead of the start of production of customer vehicles in Q1-2023. On the commercial side, the company currently has thousands of pre-orders for the full-electric Volta Zero.
“At Volta Trucks, we have a very loyal, engaged and future-facing cap table of investors supporting our journey,” says Douglas Snyder, chairman of the board of directors of Volta Trucks. “Nobody has done what Volta Trucks is doing before, and this needs significant investor confidence and trust in the company vision, strategy, business case and ongoing deliverables. The extension to our Series C funding round gives us further positive external validation of our journey, and our pre-order book gives us confidence from our customers that we are developing a product that the market needs.”