Based out of Stockholm, founded in 2019 — before the pandemic, Volta Trucks is doing everything right to become the Tesla of trucks and beat the electric vehicle giant in the commercial fleet category.
Now the Swedish electric vehicle startup has announced an oversubscribed Series C funding round with a $260 million capital raise. The funding round was led by New York-based Luxor Capital, while initial seed investor and real estate investment firm Byggmästare Anders J Ahlström, supply chain services giant Agility, and previous Series B investor B-FLEXION (formerly Waypoint Capital) also participated.
Raised over $325 million to date, according to Pitchbook data, the commercial electric fleet company has gone up to the valuation of over $490 million — which a source also confirmed to TFN.
Full-electric Volta Zero coming in 2022-end
With the Tesla Semi continuously delayed, this latest capital raise will fund all the company’s engineering and business operations through until after the start of series production of the 16-tonne full-electric Volta Zero at the end of 2022.
It will also include the development, testing and completion of a fleet of Design Verification prototypes, as well as a fleet of Product Verification vehicles that will be evaluated by customers in London and Paris in mid-2022.
Further, Volta is working on 7.5- and 12-tonne full-electric Volta Zero derivatives, and a production facility in Steyr, Austria, to start production of customer vehicles by the end of the year. In 2023, Volta Trucks has production plans for 5,000 vehicles, increasing to 14,000 trucks in 2024 and up to 27,000 vehicles in 2025. By this time, the company plans to be operational across Europe as well as the US, with a portfolio of four Volta Zero models in production, including 7.5-, 12-, 16- and 18-tonne variants.
Confirming the new investment, Essa Al-Saleh, Chief Executive Officer of Volta Trucks, said; “The successful and oversubscribed conclusion of our Series C funding round gives us a positive external validation of our journey. As an innovator and disruptor in commercial vehicles, we are working at industry-leading pace and have significant ambitions. Today’s closing of the Series C funding round, bringing €230 million into the company, gives us the financial runway to be able to deliver on all our goals as we transition from a startup to a manufacturer of full-electric trucks. The confirmation of our orderbook of over 5,000 vehicles with an orderbook value exceeding €1.2 billion, gives us and our investors, confidence that our pioneering product and service offering is both wanted and needed by our customers.”
In November 2021, Volta Trucks announced Europe’s largest purchase of full-electric trucks with DB Schenker’s order of 1,470 vehicles. This followed Petit Forestier’s order of 1,000 Volta Zeros. The firm now has a total order bank of around 5,000 vehicles, with an order bank value of circa €1.2 billion.
Founded by Scandinavian serial entrepreneur Carl-Magnus Norden and co-founder Kjell Waloen, the firm also has sales teams across France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and the UK. They have been also partnering with a number of global leaders in the supply chain for the development and production of Volta Zero. Take a look at its global competitors over here.
