Tesla is making a push to be an industry leader in the electric truck space, but it’s going to have plenty of competition from the auto industry. One company that wants a stake in the segment is Volvo. The Swedish automaker made that known after announcing plans to start selling electric medium-duty trucks in Europe by 2019. Volvo also said that the first units of its EV trucks will be put to the test this year with selected “reference customers.”
Volvo didn’t elaborate on who its reference customers are, but Jonas Odermalm, Volvo’s head of product strategy for medium-duty vehicles, indicated that the company is already working with “customers, cities, suppliers of charging infrastructure, and other key stakeholders to create the necessary framework for electric trucks.” These discussions suggest that Volvo is further along in its strategy to launch EV trucks than we expected.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, because Volvo is fully entrenched in the commercial truck industry. As it is, the company is one of the largest truck brands in the world. Its presence in this space stretches across 140 countries all over the world. If there’s an automaker that knows its way around commercial trucks, it’s Volvo.
Volvo’s entry into the EV commercial truck business makes it the latest in a long line of automakers that are now pursuing this space. We already know about Tesla and its electric Semi. We also know that Daimler has its own heavy-duty, all-electric truck concept in the mix, to go along with smaller EV trucks that are already being delivered in Europe. Even Volkswagen is putting its money in the segment with investments to bring its own brand of electric trucks adding up to $1.7 billion.
Don’t sleep on Volvo, though, because the company knows its place in all of this. “Our technology and know-how within electro-mobility are based on proven commercial solutions already in use on Volvo’s electric buses, and solutions that were introduced in Volvo’s hybrid trucks as far back as 2010,” Odermalm said.
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