Volta co-founder and executive chairman Carl-Magnus Norden on boosting its production targets for its medium-duty EV trucks, and why these trucks are crucial for urban-based, last mile delivery.
Video Transcript
BRIAN CHEUNG: So let’s bring in the co-founder and executive chairman of Votla, Carl-Magnus Norden, who joins us as part of our series looking at the future of electric vehicles sponsored by BMW. And our autos reporter, Pras Subramanian, also joins for this conversation. And Carl-Magnus, I want to just pick up this conversation by asking, your company as a full-electric motion vehicle manufacturer that at some point those want to get into that Asian market. So to kick things off, how important is the China market, given how that– [AUDIO OUT]
CARL-MAGNUS NORDEN: For us, I would say that on our roadmap, we are not so far looking very much at the Asian markets. We are really starting in Europe. And we are now looking at the US market. So that’s what we see in the next couple of years.
PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Hey, Carl-Magnus, Pras here. So as you mentioned, you guys recently updated your sales targets for 2025 but also talking about the US market and how you want to enter the US market. How is that looking? And when can we see the Volta Zero truck in the US market at some point?
CARL-MAGNUS NORDEN: Well, we have conducted a roadshow in Europe in some of the main capitals and the biggest cities in Europe over the last three months in spite of the pandemic, et cetera. Now we are ready for the summer already. Already in July, we have the plans to get over to the US starting in New York. We want to do something in Seattle, San Francisco, and we end up in Los Angeles in the end of that tour.
So it’s July, August, into September. So that’s the first peak we do in the US market.
SEANA SMITH: Carl-Magnus, I know that there’s a lot of questions out there just about growth and what needs to be done in order to reach some of the goals out there, especially when it comes to EVs. But when it comes to factory production, I know you’re starting the production overseas in Europe, any thoughts or any plans to bring production here to the US?
CARL-MAGNUS NORDEN: Well, I mean, in our roadmap, we’re really starting in Europe. And of course, we have a city-by-city strategy. So we start in London and Paris. And then we go to other capitals or bigger cities in Europe. We are looking at the US to launch during 2024. And as soon as we get some sort of scale, we obviously have to manufacture in the US. We have not chosen a site or anything like that right now. But that is on our roadmap.
PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Hey, Carl-Magnus, I wanted to ask about the Zero truck itself. How does it compare to the competitors from a rival in GM, Ford, and even Rivian, the medium-duty trucks? It’s a little bit different, right?
CARL-MAGNUS NORDEN: Right. I mean, where you see– if you look at the competitive landscape, I mean, obviously, you have the bigger companies that we all know about. And most of them are just converting the traditional design to electric if they do anything electric.
The companies you mentioned are more startups. Most of them are concentrated on the smaller end. And that’s very good. But we are looking more in the mid-range, so between– in Europe, we call it 7 and 1/2 ton to 18-19 ton. And a lot of the traffic, we’re very much focused on city distribution where we think the electric makes a lot of sense.
PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Hey, Carl-Magnus, I really wanted to talk about– I know safety is a big issue for Volta and the Zero truck. When I saw this 360 video of the interior of the cabin, it’s really amazing, the visibility that you can have as a driver. How does that inform the driver? And how does that help them in their sort of day-to-day lives and also make their lives more comfortable too?
CARL-MAGNUS NORDEN: Exactly. And I mean, there are two reasons for this. The statistics on accidents between trucks and pedestrians and bikers in most cities are horrible. And that’s due to the classical design of a truck. So they are sitting quite high up. There are blind spots all over the place. So that’s one of the reasons for us to really start designing from the ground up with electric in mind.
And we managed to maximize or hopefully minimize the blind spots. And we should bring down the accident rates.
The other thing is there is a driver shortage in the industry. So it’s difficult for the industry to attract enough drivers. So of course, our focus on comfort and safety, et cetera, for the drivers has been a key driver for us. And all that is facilitated due to us starting from electric drive.
BRIAN CHEUNG: What’s the major difference between the EV truck market and the EV car market? Is it more order book-reliant as opposed to EV car manufacturers just kind of producing it and having it sit on the lot? What’s the major difference between those two businesses?
CARL-MAGNUS NORDEN: Well, I think the customer is very different. The drivers for the customer is very different between the car where you have a fashion angle and so on. The trucks, obviously, they are a work tool that has to have as high uptime as possible, not failing. The service and maintenance has to be very thorough, et cetera, et cetera. So we are very much focusing on that side, the uptime for the customer.
BRIAN CHEUNG: OK. Well, again, co-founder and executive chairman of Volta, that’s Carl-Magnus Norden, alongside Pras Subramanian, our autos reporter. Thank you so much for joining us here.
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