Swedish Volta raises $ 260 million to a value of $ 490 million to get its all-electric trucks into production by the end of this year – TechCrunch
Volta trucks – the Swedish startup for electric vehicles that believe it can build better city delivery vehicles and other trucks that are safer and take up a smaller carbon footprint than their gas-guzzling, more clumsy, existing counterparts – have completed a major round of funding to help it through the last mile of work before its Volta Zero trucks go into commercial production later this year.
The company has raised EUR 230 million (approximately USD 260 million), a series C financing round that seems to value the company at just over USD 490 million (EUR 433 million). Volta will use the money to finance engineering and business operations for its first trucks that roll off the assembly line, on the back of what looks like a healthy list of customers: Volta said that its pre-order book for its all-electric Volta Zero – which is said to be the first fully electric, custom-built commercial freight vehicle designed for urban freight distribution – currently amounts to over € 1.2 billion and covers more than 5,000 vehicles. Volta’s broader business strategy will be based both on selling trucks and offering its vehicles on a trucking-as-a-service model.
New York-based Luxor Capital, which led the company’s € 37 million Series B in September 2021, is also leading this round. Real Estate Investment Company Builder Anders J Ahlström (as Volta, based in Stockholm), supply chain service giant Agility, and B-FLEXION (formerly Waypoint Capital) also participated. Although Volta has not disclosed its valuation, Pitchbook data notes that it is now just over 490 million dollars – a figure that we have now confirmed even with sources close to the company.
Volta’s growth, and the large amount of capital it has now raised – over $ 325 million to date – is part of a major change in the automotive world. Newly started companies, which utilize new manufacturing technologies, new smear technology and new energy infrastructure, see a mature opportunity to build new vehicles to disrupt the current status quo with safer and cleaner alternatives.
Investors – probably impressed by the success of electric efforts like Tesla’s with smaller cars – are putting their money behind these ventures to give them more firepower and more credibility with potential customers. These are all important building blocks for throwing cars into the next wave of technological innovation, where trucks like Voltas become hardware platforms that can collect and work with massive amounts of data to help vehicles and the companies that use them work on new levels of productivity.
At least that’s the theory. The process of getting there inevitably ends up being slower and more costly than initial pink projects, which is another reason why it is important for companies in the space to take up big rounds and gather groups of strategic supporters to help them get there. out on the market.
Volta’s roadmap this year will include investments in its engineering and manufacturing operations to build prototypes to verify its Volta Zero designs.
These, in turn, will be rolled out to early customers for pilots in London and Paris, cities where trucks are common but also dangerous, given traffic jams, narrow streets and the proliferation of cyclists and other users of micro-mobility, making them ideal markets. for Volta’s trucks, which claim that they not only produce smaller emissions – the first trucks will have a pure electric range of 150 – 200 km (95 – 125 miles) and eliminate an estimated 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 by 2025, the company claims – but has significantly better visibility (220 degrees, with the driver sitting in the middle of the front seat) for its drivers. Initially, what they will not have, it seems, is self-driving capacity.
“We are investigating autonomy / self-driving for the future, but as a vehicle specifically designed as a distribution and delivery vehicle in the city center, the goods in the vehicle will need to be delivered from the vehicle to its final destination. As a result, the purpose of the vehicle will always need a person involved, making self-driving less relevant for this type of vehicle, says a spokesperson.
Volta said it will also use some of the funding to continue developing less 7.5- and 12-ton all-electric Volta Zero derivatives (the first model will be 16 tons), and eventually a larger 18-ton model.
The company is building a production facility in Austria, with plans to produce 5,000 vehicles by 2023; 14,000 trucks 2024; and up to 27,000 trucks by 2025.
“The successful and oversubscribed conclusion of our Series C funding round gives us a positive external validation of our journey,” said Essa Al-Saleh, CEO of Volta Trucks, in a statement. “As an innovator and disruptor in commercial vehicles, we work at an industry-leading pace and have significant ambitions. Today’s end of the financing round for Serie C, which gives 230 million euros into the company, gives us the financial path to be able to deliver on all our goals when we move from a start-up to a manufacturer of all-electric trucks. The confirmation of our order book of over 5,000 vehicles with an order book value exceeding EUR 1.2 billion, gives us and our investors confidence that our pioneering product and service offering is both wanted and needed by our customers. ”