Volta kicks off with 300 Zero orders

Full-electric commercial vehicle manufacturer and services provider Volta Trucks has announced a strong start to 2023 by confirming customer production orders for the first 300 manufacturing slots of its full-electric Volta Zero, with an associated revenue of more than €85 million.

Series production Volta Zeros are due to start rolling off the line of the company’s contract manufacturing facility in Steyr, Austria, in early Q2 2023, with the plant ready to meet the strong customer demand for its purpose-built full-electric medium duty urban delivery truck.

Chief executive officer Essa Al-Saleh said: “Volta Trucks has made important progress in the first few weeks of 2023, confirming more than 300 customer truck orders for the first vehicles off our production line in Austria. This covers a meaningful portion of our 2023 production targets, before customers have pilot tested the vehicles. This is a major achievement and demonstrates the compelling features of the Volta Zero and the trust that our customers have in our ability to deliver.

“Volta Trucks is poised for a successful first year of sales and production. We are confident and focused on delivering on our strategic ambitions and purpose to decarbonise and improve the safety of city-centres,” he concluded.

Tyre switch could save 40,000 tonnes of CO2

Bridgestone has made its strongest-ever case for the fuel saving and CO2 reducing capabilities of its Duravis and Ecopia tyre ranges, after completing a four-month academic study with Coventry University in response to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.

Business Analytics masters graduate Sreyas Sunil Kunnappally accepted the challenge and embarked on a painstaking project to arrive at a definitive conclusion. The 24-year-old discovered that up to 40,000 tonnes of CO2 could be saved across the UK’s haulage sector per year if every long-haul HGV ran on Ecopia H002 tyres This equates to between £2,200 and £3,200 in fuel per truck (between 1,100 litres and 1,600 litre.

The data was categorised into regional (Duravis tyre range) and long haul (Ecopia tyre range). Only HGVs above 8 tonnes were considered for the market split, with 90 per cent weightage given for regional and 10 per cent for long haul.

The results were calculated on the premise that all vehicles would be running on tyres with D Class fuel economy EC tyre ratings and would be swapping to the A class Ecopia range on all axles, referencing diverse sources including official Department for Transport statistics.

The same equation was applied to all regional HGVs running on Bridgestone’s B class Duravis range, where up to 3 million metric tonnes of CO2 would be saved per year, with a fuel saving per-regional truck of between £1,300 and £1,900 (between 650 litres and 950 litres).

The study is Bridgestone’s most comprehensive piece of product research commissioned since the tyres were brought onto the market in 2018.

SPEEDY SWITCHES TO BATTERY-ELECTRIC FUSO ECANTERS

Leading tool and equipment hire specialist Speedy Services has taken a big step towards a sustainable customer delivery model by commissioning its first two zero-emission Fuso eCanters.

The battery-electric trucks are now transporting products from the company’s comprehensive range. One is based at a depot near Whitehaven, Cumbria, which supplies contractors working at the Sellafield former nuclear power and fuel reprocessing site. The other works from a branch in Warrington, where it serves a client base comprised largely of building firms.