During the week of the Brisbane Truck Show, Volvo Trucks hosted s Sustainability Summit to provide the local industry with insights into the global trends in the decarbonisation of transport. It was a great opportunity to hear from Roger Alm, Executive Vice President of Volvo Group and President of Volvo Trucks, and Per-Erik Linström, SVP Volvo Trucks International.
“It’s a great privilege and honour to be here in Australia. I’d like to talk to you about the biggest transformation ever,” said Roger Alm when opening the Sustainability Summit.
“This is actually the biggest transformation since we gave away our horses and wagons 100 years ago. We are only at the beginning of this huge transformation. And a lot of things will happen in the coming years.”
“We, as Volvo trucks, are the first mover into this transformation. Because we decided very early that electrification is the best way to reach the zero transport for our customers and society. Already in 2019, we started serial production of our first electrical trucks for city distribution. In September last year it was the biggest news when we started serial production of our heavy duty electrical trucks. And we are still the only global truck manufacturer with serial production of heavy duty electrical trucks.”
“Today, we have six electrical trucks in production, covering the majority of the customer needs. Everything from city distribution to regional haul and construction. This is by far the widest offering in the industry of electrical trucks.”
“In the first quarter of 2023, our market share (for electric trucks) in Europe was close to 50%. And also in North America we have a similar market share close to 50% as well. The numbers compared to diesel are still small, but it is growing, and it’s growing even faster still.”
“So far, we have sold more than 5,000 trucks into 40 countries and we are selling electrical trucks every day. This year, we will also start to sell electrical trucks in other continents like Africa, Asia and Latin America. Being the first mover in the market means that we are breaking new grounds and we are doing that together with our customers.”
“Heavy road transport stands for approximately 7% of the global CO2. And that is very clear that the demand for goods will increase as the population of people will grow around the world. To stop global warming; which we need to do. We as an industry need to shift to fossil free transport, and we need to do it now, and fast together with our customers.”
Per-Erik Linström explained how investments in technology will be required and Volvo has the financial muscle to spend the money on R&D.
“This is huge transformation. And it’s primarily driven by technologies,” explained Linström.
“We strongly believe that battery electric trucks will be a huge majority of reaching our target of 100% fossil free vehicles from 2040. We realise that this will not be one silver bullet solution. We need to work with more than one solution depending on the availability of green energy; depending on infrastructure; depending on the applications and the starting conditions in certain markets. So that’s the reason why we believe we need to work with different solutions. We have roughly 30,000 engineers working together every day to find new solutions for the future. And we do it from a position of spending. We have the financial muscles to be able to work for these solutions.”
