• Volta Trucks expands its UK-based engineering capabilities to support the development of forthcoming vehicle programs.
• Company launches an ambitious recruitment drive, scaling to over 280 employees by year-end.

Volta Trucks, a leading and disruptive full-electric commercial vehicle manufacturer and services provider, is expanding its UK-based Research and Development capabilities. This comes as the company delivers a program of prototype full-electric 16-tonne commercial vehicles for customer evaluation in London and Paris by mid-2022, ahead of series production starting by the end of next year.

The expanding Research and Development team is primarily based near Reading, UK, close to where the London vehicles will operate. The scalable offices can currently accommodate over 110 engineers working on the world’s first purpose-built full electric 16-tonne commercial vehicle, as well as the forthcoming 7.5, 12 and 19-tonne variants. The team is networked to UK vehicle testing facilities where the company’s first prototype vehicles are already running, and the forthcoming manufacturing plant in Steyr, Austria. It is also connected to the company’s headquarters in Stockholm and regional offices in Paris and other European cities.

Volta Trucks has embarked on an ambitious recruitment drive to accelerate the development of the full-electric Volta Zero. Having started 2021 with a handful of employees, headcount now stands at over 150 as Volta Trucks continues to search for talented and progressively minded engineers, and industrial and commercial experts to bring vehicles to market on time. The ambition is to have more than 280 employees by the end of 2021, with over 70 open positions currently advertised on www.voltatrucks.com/careers and additional roles being frequently added.

Chief Executive Officer of Volta Trucks, Essa Al-Saleh, said; “As a nimble and agile start-up organisation, in 2020 and 2021, we designed and developed the Volta Zero demonstrator vehicle, introduced it to the marketplace, took it on a six-centre European roadshow, and took thousands of pre-orders for trucks, all with a small team working remotely through the pandemic. We now have a UK home for our engineers, close to where our Pilot Fleet vehicles will soon operate with customers in London. The UK also has a long history of engineering excellence, and this has already proven to be a great source of talent for us, but we now need to accelerate the growth of the company. With our innovative product and ground-breaking approach to customers and vehicle ownership, we are looking for the brightest, forward-thinking and entrepreneurial experts to join the Volta Trucks team and help us on our journey towards a safer and more sustainable future for commercial vehicles.”

Editor’s notes.

About the Volta Zero

The Volta Zero is the world’s first purpose-built full-electric 16-tonne vehicle designed for inner-city logistics, reducing the environmental impact of freight deliveries in city centres. Designed from the ground up with an operating pure-electric range of 150 – 200 kms (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 of a Volta Zero 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, minimising dangerous blind spots. The prototype Volta Zero was launched in September 2020, with the first vehicles expected to be operating with customers in mid-2022.

About Volta Trucks

Volta Trucks is a start-up full-electric goods vehicle manufacturer and services company. Volta Trucks has offices in Sweden, France and the UK and is partnering with a number of global leaders in the supply chain for the development and production of the Volta Zero.