Volta Trucks closes funding round with €230 million

Swedish electric truck startup Volta Trucks has closed its €230 million Series C funding round. This latest capital raising will fund the company’s entire engineering and business operations until after the start of series production of the 16-tonne version of the Volta Zero at the end of 2022.

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According to Volta Trucks, the Series C was led by existing investor Luxor Capital. The amount currently invested by the hedge fund and the shares it now holds in the company are not disclosed in the announcement. In addition, the seed investor Byggmastare Anders J. Ahlstrom Holding participated in the C round.

It is by far the company’s largest financing round to date, with total capital now amounting to around 300 million euros. By comparison, the Series B financing in September 2021 brought the company “only” 37 million euros.

The million-euro investment comes at a time when Volta Trucks’ need for capital is very high: as reported, series production at Steyr Automotive in Austria is due to start at the end of this year. In the middle of the year, the production of prototypes for “production verification” is to begin there. Together with the parallel preparations for other production facilities, large sums of money are tied up here. By 2023, 5,000 units are to be built in Steyr.

The Swedish start-up with its development centre in Coventry, UK, had presented the series design of the vehicle in November 2021. The similarity to the previously shown demonstrator vehicle is still there, but all body parts have been adapted and redesigned. The Volta Zero was developed as a fully electric truck for urban distribution traffic and was designed for this purpose – for example, the driver sits in the middle to have a better overview of the traffic thanks to the large windscreen.

Production is to start with the 16-tonne variant. However, the basic design will also be applied to the future 7.5-tonne, 12-tonne and 18-tonne versions. According to Volta Trucks, the current financing will also cover the development of the 7.5- and 12-tonne versions. However, a start of series production for these versions is not yet mentioned.

Update 24 November 2022

Electric truck start-up Volta Trucks announced an extension of its Series C funding round of €230 million by another €60 million. The round was supported by all previous investors. This brings the total investment in the company to over 360 million euros to date. The company says it has received “thousands of pre-orders” for the all-electric Volta Zero so far.

Volta Trucks, meanwhile, has completed the first round of test drives of prototypes of the Volta Zero with interested companies and organisations in its European launch markets. More than 1,500 test drives were conducted in Paris, Madrid, Milan, Selm (Germany) and Millbrook (England). The feedback received will feed into the future product roadmap, with next-generation prototype vehicles rolling off the production line for production validation since September at the contract plant in Steyr, Austria. In October, Volta Trucks had also entered into a strategic partnership with Siemens Smart Infrastructure to work together to provide comprehensive charging infrastructure and software for Volta Trucks customers.

reuters.com, docs.google.com, voltatrucks.com (update)