Volvo Trucks South Africa (SA) has started the homologation of its first extra-heavy battery electric truck units.

The goal is to present the first of these vehicles to a local customer, KDG Logistics, within the next two months.

Eric Parry, Volvo Trucks SA sustainable solutions manager, took the Volvo FM 4 × 2 truck-tractor through its paces on a trip from the manufacturer’s dealer in Durban to its facilities in Johannesburg – a 600 km journey – with only one stop to charge the vehicle.

“We aimed to prove that an extra-heavy electric truck like this can drive long distances,” says Parry.

“Even though we didn’t carry any payload, it still gave us a good indication of just what this truck is capable of.

Generally, battery electric trucks are used in regional distribution, operating in and around cities, running from distribution centres to stores, and so forth, but, with proper planning, customers will be able to do so much more.”

Volvo Trucks SA is bringing the Swedish truck maker’s complete extra-heavy electric truck range to the country, which includes the FH, FM and FMX models, in truck- tractor and rigid configurations.

“Locally, there have been a lot of activity and interest around electromobility a lot quicker than we anticipated,” notes Volvo Trucks SA sales director Sally Rutter.

“Irrespective of local challenges when it comes to loadshedding and infrastructure, a lot of customers are looking at setting up their own charging infrastructure to accommodate electromobility and meet their own sustainability goals.”

“These trucks can run meaningful kilometres in a day and, if you have your charging setup optimised, you can extend that range quite comfortably, matching your operations to that setup,” adds Parry.

“Within regional operations, public charging is not really relevant for these types of fleets and having control of their own charging will allow customers to fix their energy costs.”