Volta Trucks, the leading and disruptive full-electric commercial vehicle manufacturer and services provider, has completed a rigorous program of hot weather testing of its full-electric 16-tonne Volta Zero.
Taking place over six weeks at the purpose-built Nardo Technical Centre in Southern Italy, the hot weather testing program was designed to ensure that the Volta Zero will deliver outstanding levels of reliability and durability when series production of customer specification vehicles starts early next year.
The Vehicle Development team at Volta Trucks completed more than 2,500km of customer-focused driving cycles at motorway, town, and city speeds. Undertaken in temperatures of up to 39 degrees Celsius during the day and 28 degrees Celsius at night, the air conditioning system and thermal management of the battery and powertrain of the Volta Zero have been fully evaluated and pushed to the extremes to ensure optimum operational reliability.
Although unlikely to be experienced in its natural urban surroundings, testing has also been undertaken on course dustier surfaces, which provided an even tougher challenge for the Volta Zero’s chassis, pushing the vehicle’s suspension, steering, traction control, and braking system beyond the expected limit of normal customer usage. In addition, dust accumulation was studied for cabin and load box ingress, as well as how it sits on components such as lights, wipers, and panels.
Ian Collins, Chief Product Officer of Volta Trucks, said: “The completion of our hot weather testing program marks another important milestone in the development and delivery of the Volta Zero. The testing allows our engineers to incorporate their latest findings in the series production of customer specification vehicles, ensuring the Volta Zero will deliver a reliable and durable experience for future customers.”
About the Volta Zero
The Volta Zero is the world’s first purpose-built full-electric 16-tonne vehicle designed for urban 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 km (95 – 125 miles), the Volta Zero will eliminate an estimated 1.2M tonnes of CO2 by 2025.
Safety is also at the heart of Volta Trucks, with its ambition of producing the safest trucks for our cities. The Volta Zero was designed for electric from the outset, which facilitates a step-change in vehicle, driver, and pedestrian safety. Thanks to the removal of the internal combustion engine, the operator sits in a central driving position, with a much lower seat height than a conventional truck. This combination, plus a glass house-style cab design, gives the driver a wide 220 degrees of visibility, minimizing dangerous blind spots. The prototype Volta Zero was launched in September 2020, with the first vehicles starting to be evaluated by customers in late 2022.
In November 2021, Volta Trucks announced Europe’s largest purchase of full-electric trucks with DB Schenker’s order of 1,470 vehicles. This followed Petit Forestier’s order of 1,000 Volta Zeros. Volta Trucks now has a total order bank of around 6,500 vehicles, with an order bank value of circa €1.4 billion.
