Volta Trucks Produces Electric Trucks In Former MAN Factory

JAKARTA - Electric truck startup Volta Trucks said on Wednesday September 8 that its first trucks will be built under a contract starting at the end of 2022 at the former MAN truck factory in Austria. The plant has also been taken over by Steyr Automotive, a newly formed company to run this business.

As part of a cost-cutting plan, the Volkswagen AG MAN unit recently transferred its factory in Steyr, Austria, to Steyr Automotive, which is run by former Canadian auto supplier Magna International Inc executive Siegfried Wolf. The plant will continue to make vehicles for MAN until 2023, but will serve as a contract manufacturer for other companies.

Stockholm-based Volta Trucks, which also operates in the UK, began producing the Volta Zero, a 16-ton electric truck, in late 2022 and producing 5,000 vehicles for customers in 2023 ahead of Paris's diesel truck ban, which takes effect in 2024.

Instead of building its own expensive factory and working hard to find a way to build its electric trucks on a large scale, Volta will hire Steyr Automotive to build them.

"Despite the excellent manufacturing facilities, Steyr Automotive has trained experienced engineers and managers at all levels of their workforce," Volta's Chief Technology Officer, Trucks Kjell Waloen, told Reuters. "If you start a new product in a new factory with no experience, you multiply the risks and complications many times over."

Instead of going through "manufacturing hell" as Tesla Inc did when it ramped up production of its Model 3 sedan for the mass market in 2017 and 2018, some electric startups have chosen to leave it to operators with experience building vehicles.

REE Automotive and Fisker Inc have teamed up with Magna to build their EV, while Fisker has a similar agreement with Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Co Ltd.

Volta Trucks is currently planning four different sized electric truck models and they expect to be able to produce more than 27,000 trucks annually by 2025.

Toyota's efforts to mass-produce solid-state batteries have stumbled as they are expensive to manufacture and prone to cracking as they expand and shrink during use.

Toyota also plans to use solid-state batteries in hybrid electric vehicles like the Prius, he said.

Volkswagen, the world's second-largest automaker, said Tuesday that it may have to spend more to realize its planned transformation towards autonomous driving and EVs.

The German company, which plans to invest 150 billion euros in its business by 2025, has repeatedly said it can fund this transition based on current cash flows.