Volvo heavy-duty electric trucks next year

Speaking at a meeting with transport journalists this week, Volvo’s Vice President of Emerging Technology Business Development Paul Ilmer said that we will see the big end of Volvo’s electric truck range here in late 2023.

“We will see the FM and FH in 2023,” said Ilmer. “We have had significant interest and it’s increasing week by week,” he added.

He also said that the new trucks would have a width of 2.5 metres so that even if the government doesn’t change the law and offer more width, they can bring them in and they will pass our ADRs.

Ilmer said the success they’ve had to date with the medium-duty trucks has enabled the fast-tracking of the heavy-duty trucks. “Our existing EVs have given us no trouble at all,” he said. “The FL and FE have been on test with Linfox in Melbourne and they’ve been great.

“We did expect some teething issues with the trials we did in Melbourne and it was quite uneventful. The trucks just run, they charge of an evening with a 22kW charger and it’s very, very simple.”

However, Mr Ilmer said that front axle load is a big stumbling block.

“Each battery is about 500kg; in the FM and FH we need six of them and where they’re located, our 6.5-tonne front axle weight is not enough,” he said.

In Europe, electric trucks are given extra load on the front axle to compensate for the weight of the batteries, and the big truck companies like Volvo here in Australia are hoping that our government will follow suit and give electric trucks an extra tonne or so to allow them to compete on load with their diesel counterparts.

“There has been discussion [in government] but there’s no commitment at all to do that,” said Ilmer. “If I look at our local program, that’s the only issue. That’s it.”

“And it’s not exclusive to Volvo but it is exclusive to all EVs.”

Ilmer said there is also a training aspect to the vehicle to ensure that the operators are getting the best out of them. “Every truck we hand over has a driver training component attached to it,” he said.

“And part of that is around charging and charging hygiene. This is so that no-one runs the battery completely flat, because ideally you want to keep the state of charge within the 15 to 85 per cent mark, so there’s a lot to do about that.

“But driver training is important. Just like a diesel truck, the driver’s right foot can have about 20 to 30 cent effect on range.”

Ilmer also said that Volvo has gone to a lot of trouble to get their technicians up to speed on the electric trucks. “A dealer can’t accept a truck unless they have undergone training. There must be at least two technicians per shift that have undergone training on the electric trucks,” he said.

“The trucks have a lot of safeguards built into them and the system has self-diagnosis in it, but we don’t want anyone who is not trained working on the trucks.

“We also send a pack of information to Emergency Services in each state where we send trucks so they know what to do in the event of an issue,” he added.

Mr Ilmer said that the electric trucks would be built in the Wacol factory from around 2026. “That process [building electric trucks in Queensland] has already started,” he said. “It makes no sense to keep importing them.”

He also said that at some stage “probably around 2030” Wacol’s output would be around 50 per cent electric trucks.

But he also said that electric won’t suit everyone. “We know that in the future for transport tasks beyond about 300 kays, beyond about 44 tonnes, we’re probably going to have to lean towards hydrogen and that is a whole different story,” he said.

Asked how long we’d be seeing diesel trucks for, Mr Ilmer said we’d probably be relying on diesel for a long time: “If you look at our transport tasks I think we’ll be relying on the internal combustion engine for decades; I can’t see a way around it.

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“I guess what we hope as a group is that we’d run those engines on renewable diesel like HVO [hydrotreated vegetable oil] and maybe a combination of hydrogen injection and diesel just to lower the carbon profile. But if I was to sit here and say there was a sunset clause on diesel, it’d be completely false.

“I think the people in Gothenburg [Volvo's global head office] have been pretty transparent about that too,” he said.

So it looks like we’re going to see internal combustion powered trucks for the foreseeable future. However, according to this industry insider, the mix of electric and diesel trucks is certain to change very soon – and quite rapidly.