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This fully electric delivery truck was built to be much safer to use in cities than the average large vehicle — see the Volta Zero

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Volta Trucks has its eye on the niche inner-city delivery market, where electric trucks could replace existing fleets without requiring a professional driver. </li><li>In an interview, CEO Carl-Magnus Norden explained Volta's unique truck design, and answered concerns about his lack of relevant experience in the field.</li><li>The company's taking cues from Apple and Tesla to enter a quickly growing electric vehicle market.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul>Carl-Magnus Norden isn't a car person. And he's much less a truck person. But that's not keeping the Swedish entrepreneur from trying to electrify urban deliveries in some of Europe's biggest cities. "To me, it's so obvious that this is the right thing to do," Norden said in an interview. "The industry is acting very slowly. Everybody is talking about 2030, 2040, but nobody feels the urge to do anything today."The 65-year-old's previous acts have included investments in real-estate, mobile telecom, private equity, and other manufacturing. To learn the automotive industry, he's teamed up with Kjell Walöen, Volta's chief technology officer, who spent a decade at Volvo as well several years at Polestar and Ford.The sparse team to date includes a small sales staff, and a handful of engineers in the Midlands in England, where the company will likely produce its first truck. Volta plans to have a working demonstration model of its electric delivery truck by summer, and the designs so far are radically different than the diesel trucks making deliveries in cities today. "The design of a truck today is very logical," he said. "You have a bulky diesel engine, a big gear box, and you want to maximize the load space so you push all of that forward and you wrap the cab around it." With a completely different powertrain in place, Volta's able to completely redesign much of truck with these different priorities in mind. It's not unlike Tesla's "front trunk" or a passenger bus. Perhaps most notably, however, is the drivers' seat. The operator is in the center of the cab, much lower to the ground (eliminating the need for a ladder and any associated jumping), and has a near 180-degree front view. According to Norden, this could help eliminate many of the <a href="https://etsc.eu/urgent-action-needed-to-tackle-deaths-of-pedestrians-and-cyclists/">tens of thousands of pedestrian deaths</a> caused by drivers every year. Thanks to its smaller size, the truck wouldn't require a professional Class C license in Volta's first target markets of London and Paris. That's key, given an industry shortage of drivers, Norden says. First, it has to actually sell trucks. The idea is to start small, Norden says, again drawing inspiration from Tesla. "Elon Musk is a fantastic guy," Norden said. "Of course I don't want to compare myself with him, but if we can get to moderate success in this, and get big OEMs starting to move faster, then I would be very happy." But unlike Tesla, Volta won't own the factory. "I like the way Apple do with their iPhone: the engineering, designing, et cetera," Norden said. "Then somebody else is doing the contract manufacturing and in the end we will take care of the truck, the market, and putting all of these pieces together."In that respect, the company could fare better than Tesla, which burned through massive amounts of cash struggled to bring factories online. "Our interest is not really in tying up all our capital in production," Norden quipped. "But also for speed. We want them to come to the market as soon as possible."But everything after manufacturing, of course, is where things get most complicated. And Volta wants to be at "full production" by 2022. To get there, the company's targeting a fundraising round this year and has held talks with the "top 20" delivery companies and fleet managers as it begins its trials in London and Paris soon. "If you would have said what I have said ten or 15 years ago, of course you would have been crazy and everybody would have said you are crazy," Norden said. "But as things start to shift, you could actually have a chance as a small, entrepreneurial person to be ahead of all the other guys. You can find your niche and thrive on that.""In the beginning most people said I was crazy," Norden said. "But now it's fewer and fewer which is a good sign."

Volta Trucks wants to electrify truck deliveries in cities. It's taking a page from Tesla and Apple's playbook to do it.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Automakers are scrambling to react to a shift in demand for expensive battery-powered vehicles.</li><li>The EV segment has enjoyed a long period of exponential growth.</li></ul>Car companies talk a big game about the transition to electric cars. But behind the scenes, many of these automakers are scrambling to react to a change in demand for expensive battery-powered vehicles.Take the last few weeks for example: <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ford-considers-cutting-shift-at-f-150-lightning-pickup-plant-uaw-memo-says-91075154" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ford temporarily dropped an F-150 Lightning production shift</a> (despite <a href="https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2023/08/01/ford-restarts-expanded-rouge-electric-vehicle-center--f-150-ligh.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">upping capacity for the electric pickup</a> just months earlier), and said it would renew its focus on hybrids. <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/17/gm-to-delay-ev-truck-production-at-michigan-plant.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">General Motors said it would postpone some of its electric truck production</a> by a year.All the while, the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/electric-vehicle-startups-trouble-insiders-reveal-layoffs-production-manufacturing-2022-8">once bustling EV startup industry is shrinking by the day</a>, with former Wall Street darlings like Lordstown, Volta, and Lucid folding or missing predictions.Electric-car shoppers have more options than ever before, a turning point many in the industry hoped would draw more buyers away from gas-powered cars into the battery-powered segment. But the first real test of a fully-loaded EV market <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/electric-vehicle-revolution-hits-delays-production-sales-tesla-china-2023-4">isn't going so well</a>. Electric vehicle inventories are <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dealers-turning-away-evs-velectric-cars-demand-cools-inventory-2023-8">building up on dealer lots</a> quickly. While the companies argue this bloat is normal for a new vehicle ramp-up, it's still <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/electric-vehicle-inventory-most-least-dealerships-availability-hyundai-kia-2023-6">taking dealers longer to sell these cars</a>, sending <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/electric-vehicle-incentives-at-dealerships-high-affordability-price-parity-2023-10">EV discounts to an all-time high</a>. "It's always been the 'build it and they will come' strategy," Vince Sheehy, a car dealer in the Washington, D.C. area, told Insider. "And they're just not coming."Sheehy, who sells a stable of brands including Ford, Hyundai, Volkswagen, and GMC, says electric cars are the slowest sellers on his lots right now. He currently has enough electric cars to last for 100 days across all brands.Though the <a href="https://www.coxautoinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Q3-EV-share-chart.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">EV share of some automakers' businesses is small</a>, the EV segment has been enjoying a long period of exponential growth. Hovering for years around under 1% of the total US market, EV sales hit a record of 300,000 last year and, through September 2023, the segment accounts for 9% of all sales, according to JD Power.But that pace of growth – easy to achieve in such a small segment – is showing clear signs of slowing. That begs the question as to whether automakers pushed their transition just a little early."It's not necessarily bad news, it's just a matter of, they over-anticipated," said Cameron Johnson, CEO of Magic City Auto Group, a Virginia dealership group selling mostly domestic brands. "The customer and the dealer started to say, 'Can you turn off the faucet or can you at least slow these things down?' Because they're coming so fast. We're not able to fill all the seats," he said. <h2>A perfect storm for EVs</h2>As tons of highly-anticipated electric models hit dealer lots, the entire auto industry was hit with <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/car-loan-vehicle-shoppers-denied-what-to-do-2023-7">a wave of macroeconomic changes</a>. It's a perfect storm of headwinds for the plug-in market, with high interest rates, difficulty getting loans, and monthly payments at record highs making the already-expensive vehicles hard to justify for the average driver.Sheehy is seeing this play out on his lots. With the wealthy early adopters largely sated at this point, he says the profile of the average EV shopper has changed dramatically even in the last six months."People are no longer evaluating EVs as 'I'm gonna buy an EV, but which one?' It's, 'I'll buy an EV depending on the value proposition relative to a plug-in hybrid, a hybrid, or a traditional ICE vehicle," Sheehy said. "When you look at it that way, you almost invariably don't choose the electric vehicle."The industry is trying to react to this change, lathering on discounts and taking advantage of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-tax-credit">new federal programs</a> to bring the average price paid for an EV in September to $50,683, down from more than $65,000 a year ago. But even that is still a price point unobtainable for many, and, as automakers like <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-price-cuts-ford-mach-e-discounts-angry-customers-different-approaches-2023-1">Ford and Tesla have found out</a>, price <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/teslas-price-cuts-margins-ever-musk-not-giving-up2023-7">cuts cut deeply into the margins of already-unprofitable vehicles</a>. Price parity between EVs and gas-powered cars is getting closer in the luxury market, but the same can't be said yet for mass-market cars, which cost<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/electric-vehicles-pricing-mass-market-luxury-parity-2023-10"> an average of $16,000 more than their fossil-fueled counterparts</a>. "The one glaring issue," Eric Frehsée, president of the Tamaroff Group of dealerships said, "is frankly, the unrealistic timelines that are being set. I don't know if that means we need to change some of the timelines."<h2>Understanding the new EV shopper</h2>All of this is a sign that fully-electric cars – and even their hybrid counterparts – are likely to be relegated to the luxury and ultra-luxury segment for several years to come while the industry inches more slowly toward mass-market affordability.Stewart Stropp, executive director of EV intelligence at JD Power, said the firm is still forecasting significant increases in EV share moving forward, but the rate of that growth will depend on external factors like improvements to charging infrastructure and a proliferation of EVs that stack up more evenly against their gas-powered counterparts in terms of price and performance."Those are absolutely essential elements that need to be in place in order for us to shift out of the early adoption phase," Stropp said.High-spending, early adopters are harder to come by some 10 years after Tesla reshaped the segment. And without more affordable options, dealers told Insider they are running out of customers to pitch their electric cars to.One Ford dealer in the Midwest, who turned away Mustang Mach-E allocation earlier this year, said the electric options on his lot aren't matching up with what his customers are looking for – or even what they can afford. Fully-loaded Mach-Es sit on his lot for weeks and months at a time because customers can't justify the hefty price tag – especially while <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-model-y-less-than-average-gas-car-2023-10">Tesla keeps dropping its prices.</a>Martin French, managing director at automotive consultancy Berylls, says the transition to EVs is coming. But the inflection point is at least five years off because the industry still hasn't done enough to make an electric car an attractive alternative to a gas-powered car, he said."The future is definitely going to be EVs," French said, "but the future for EVs is 2030."

The auto industry overestimated EV demand this year. Now companies are scrambling.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Arclight Clean Transition Corp's stock skyrocketed as much as 12% on Wednesday.</li><li>The move came after the company's merger partner, <keyword id="3651813" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="proterra">Proterra</keyword>, inked a deal with Montgomery County to provide its battery technology for school buses.</li><li>The 16-year deal is reportedly worth $169 million and involves the lease of 326 buses.</li></ul><a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/actc-stock">Arclight Clean Transition Corp.</a> stock jumped as much as 12% on Wednesday after the company announced its merger partner Proterra inked a deal with the Board of Education in Maryland's Montgomery County.According to a <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-24/biggest-electric-school-bus-deal-in-u-s-approved-in-maryland">report from Bloomberg</a>, Proterra will provide its electric battery technology for school buses as a part of a $169 million deal with the county.Montgomery officials plan to replace their entire 1,422 diesel bus fleet with EVs over the next two decades.Wednesday's contract is the first step toward that goal. The deal involves the lease of 326 buses to the county over the next 16 years. The vehicles will be built by Thomas Built Buses, a division of <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/ddaif-stock">Daimler AG</a>, but will use battery technology from Proterra.Proterra had already sold four electric buses to Montgomery county for use as public transport.The Chamath Palihapitiya-backed <keyword id="1817616" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="SPAC">SPAC</keyword> <keyword id="10822807" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="arclight-clean-transition-corp-">Arclight Clean Transition Corp.</keyword> merged with Proterra in a transaction the billionaire investor called his <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/palihapitiyas-biggest-investment-climate-change-arclight-clean-transition-merge-proterra-2021-1">"biggest investment in climate change"</a> on Jan. 12.Palihapitiya <a href="https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1364597433435496456">tweeted</a> about the recent school bus contract win, calling it a "huge deal" for Proterra and his SPAC.The transportation director of Montgomery County Public Schools said the contract will also be the first electric school bus agreement in the nation that isn't federally funded.And it will make the county a leader in the electrification of school buses nationwide.Montgomery officials also estimate the costs of the electric buses will be in line with what they would have spent on diesel school buses."It costs no more than what districts are spending on diesel," Montgomery's transportation director told Bloomberg. "We think there's going to be savings initially on fuel and maintenance. The price of electric buses will fall and the price of diesel buses is going to rise to the point that they meet. And, eventually, you won't be able to get a diesel bus.""We know exactly where they are going to be overnight and we know how far they're going to go. It's sort of the perfect vehicle to electrify," the director added.The deal represents another positive step for Proterra as the company looks to take advantage of a potential <a href="https://joebiden.com/clean-energy/">green energy investment wave</a> from the Biden Administration.Recently, Proterra has been involved in several key deals including:<ul><li>A collaboration with Komatsu on battery systems for electric construction equipment.</li><li>Harvard's acquisition of four 35-foot electric buses to help curb emissions on its campus.</li><li>A deal with the Stockholm-based, UK <keyword id="1310333" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="electric-bus">electric bus</keyword> operator Volta Trucks to supply battery technology.</li></ul><keyword id="10822806" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="arclight-clean-transition-corp-stock">Arclight Clean Transition Corp. stock</keyword> was up 6.48% as of 12:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday.<div type="image" title="Arclight chart." height="709" width="834" msid="81196414" hostid="261"></div>

Chamath Palihapitiya-backed Arclight Clean Transition Corp. jumps 12% after announcing Maryland school-bus deal

Hollis Johnson/Business InsiderA Lexus LS500.<ul class="summary-list"><li>Lexus will unveil this year an advanced driver-assistance feature that will let drivers take their hands off the wheel on highways, Lexus president Koji Sato told <a href="https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/lexus-prepares-introduce-level-2-autonomy">Automotive News Europe</a>.</li><li>Drivers will have to watch the road while using the system, called Highway Teammate.</li><li>Tesla's Autopilot can also control steering, braking, and acceleration in some situations, but requires the driver to both keep their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road at all times.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul>Lexus will unveil this year a vehicle with an advanced driver-assistance feature, called Highway Teammate, that will allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel on highways, Lexus president Koji Sato told <a href="https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/lexus-prepares-introduce-level-2-autonomy">Automotive News Europe</a>. Drivers will have to keep their eyes on the road while using the system, Sato added.Highway Teammate will be able to change lanes on its own and pass other vehicles, according to Automotive News Europe's report. Sato didn't specify which vehicle will include the feature, when that vehicle will go on sale, or the regions in which Highway Teammate will be available. The system's described capabilities resemble those of General Motors' <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cadillacs-hands-free-super-cruise-system-is-coming-to-the-escalade-2020-1">Super Cruise</a>, which allows drivers to take their hands off the wheel on highways that have been mapped by GM. As with Highway Teammate, Super Cruise users must watch the road.The hands-off capability will distinguish Highway Teammate from Tesla's Autopilot, which can also control steering, braking, and acceleration in some situations, but requires the driver to keep their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road at all times. Tesla has <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/teslas-autopilot-faces-scrutiny-after-accidents-2018-5">drawn criticism</a> for using more expansive language than other automakers when marketing its driver-assistance feature. On its website, the electric-car maker describes some of Autopilot's current features as "full self-driving," despite the fact that Autopilot is not a fully-autonomous system.Some companies that are developing autonomous-driving technology, like the Google spinoff <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-ditched-system-similar-to-tesla-autopilot-in-2013-2019-9">Waymo</a>, are focusing entirely on systems that don't require the driver's attention or input, since they fear systems that require supervision can place <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-problem-with-semi-autonomous-systems-2019-2">unrealistic demands</a> on human attention spans.<h2>Read Automotive News Europe's full report <a href="https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/lexus-prepares-introduce-level-2-autonomy">here</a>.</h2><ul class="read-more-links"><li>Read more:</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/11-pickup-trucks-people-us-keep-longest-2020-2">The 11 pickup trucks people keep the longest in the US</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-may-have-big-advantage-over-porsche-gm-battery-costs-2020-2">Tesla may have a big advantage over Porsche and GM in the most expensive part of an electric car</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/volta-trucks-ceo-interview-taking-page-from-apple-tesla-playbook-2020-2">Volta Trucks wants to electrify truck deliveries in cities. It's taking pages from Tesla's and Apple's playbooks to do it.</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nikola-badger-electric-pickup-with-better-range-than-tesla-cybertruck-2020-2">A new electric pickup truck with a longer range than Tesla's Cybertruck will beat the hotly anticipated EV to market - check out the Badger</a></li></ul><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/intelligence/bi-intelligence-daily?IR=T&amp;itm_source=businessinsider&amp;itm_medium=ctgr_bii&amp;itm_term=ctgr_subscription&amp;itm_content=tesla&amp;itm_campaign=bi-intelligence-daily"></a> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/rise-and-fall-apple-ipod-2020-1">The rise and fall of the iPod</a></h3>

You Searched For "Volta Trucks" and got 6 results

This fully electric delivery truck was built to be much safer to use in cities than the average large vehicle — see the Volta Zero

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Chamath Palihapitiya-backed Arclight Clean Transition Corp. jumps 12% after announcing Maryland school-bus deal

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