“The enquiries about electric trucks are coming from everybody, from the most traditional dyed in the wool generational trucking companies,” says Paul Ilmer, Vice President Emerging Technology Business development at Volvo. “The enquiries are coming from everybody, from the most traditional dyed in the wool generational trucking companies.

“Some very small and some are large, it is very surprising. I think the way that we work with common architecture and shared technologies with the Volvo brand, and we look at the heavy duty market, when we get to a maturity with electric power, we can lift that up and move it across to the other brands we have.”

The momentum is increasing and the teams at both Volvo and Daimler, and the others offering electric trucks now, are struggling to keep up with a growing demand.

“Bus is a great example, our batteries and electric motors, and now the transmissions in FL and FE came from the bus part of the business,” says Paul. “That’s worked really well for us. I think that’s why we’re really confident about the heavy duty range. With the two FL models, we started with, there was a really good partnership with us and Linfox, a clear idea that this was a trial.

“We wanted to work out what we needed to change or do differently, and then we worked out we didn’t need to do anything. But until we actually had the trucks here. You just don’t know environments. 

“We have been completely surprised at the enquiry rate, how fast it’s gone. Also, the engagement from the dealer network, the engagement from customers, engagement from industry, as well as the various industry associations. The whole thing has just completely surprised me. 

“When I started doing this four years ago, if somebody said, ‘Hey, you’re going to commercialise these trucks in 2022, and you’ll sell the heavy duty 2023’ I could not have believed them, it’s taken us all by surprise.”

The question which comes to mind, at this point, is what sort of percentage of Volvo’s truck sales in 2030 are likely to be electric? The actual answer is very hard to judge and hugely dependent upon government’s interests and incentives.

“If everything lined up, I can see 50 per cent,” says Paul. “In my head, I’m going through the applications and the applications deployment, as a percentage of the current market. If you look at the market, it’s split in the middle with 50 per cent B-double and above and 50 per cent is in single trailer and below. There’s not too many of those applications apart from heavy haul which couldn’t be converted to an electric truck or a hydrogen truck.”. “Some very small and some are large, it is very surprising. I think the way that we work with common architecture and shared technologies with the Volvo brand, and we look at the heavy duty market, when we get to a maturity with electric power, we can lift that up and move it across to the other brands we have. 

“Bus is a great example, our batteries and electric motors, and now the transmissions in FL and FE came from the bus part of the business. That’s worked really well for us. I think that’s why we’re really confident about the heavy duty range. With the two FL models, we started with, there was a really good partnership with us and Linfox, a clear idea that this was a trial.

“We wanted to work out what we needed to change or do differently, and then we worked out we didn’t need to do anything. But until we actually had the trucks here. You just don’t know environments. 

“We have been completely surprised at the enquiry rate, how fast it’s gone. Also, the engagement from the dealer network, the engagement from customers, engagement from industry, as well as the various industry associations. The whole thing has just completely surprised me. 

“When I started doing this four years ago, if somebody said, ‘Hey, you’re going to commercialise these trucks in 2022, and you’ll sell the heavy duty 2023’ I could not have believed them, it’s taken us all by surprise.”

The momentum is increasing and the teams at both Volvo and Daimler, and the others offering electric trucks now, are struggling to keep up with a growing demand.

The question which comes to mind, at this point, is what sort of percentage of Volvo’s truck sales in 2030 are likely to be electric? The actual answer is very hard to judge and hugely dependent upon government’s interests and incentives.

“If everything lined up, I can see 50 per cent,” says Paul. “In my head, I’m going through the applications and the applications deployment, as a percentage of the current market. If you look at the market, it’s split in the middle with 50 per cent B-double and above and 50 per cent is in single trailer and below. There’s not too many of those applications apart from heavy haul which couldn’t be converted to an electric truck or a hydrogen truck.”

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