Volvo will start building electric trucks in Australia by 2027, as reported by The Driven.
According to the report, Volvo’s Wacol factory in Queensland, the biggest vehicle manufacturing plant in all of Australia, will be the home of the electric truck fleet. Volvo Group Australia told Gizmodo Australia that the site employs 750 people and that the company spends $600 million on the local economy every year.
Volvo Group Australia’s president, Martin Merrick, spoke at a panel at the Australian National University on Electrification in Sweden and Australia, and said that the company would start to build electric trucks in the country “within the next three to four years”. Though, keep in mind that this could change, as it was reported in November 2021 that Volvo would start building electric trucks in Australia in 2025.
This comes three months after Volvo Cars Australia announced that it would be going all-electric from 2026, a decision that put the Swedish car company’s decarbonisation well ahead of other automakers in the local market. It also put the Australian division ahead of Volvo’s international operations, which are planned to go all-electric by 2030.
But Volvo Group Australia, the company that handles Volvo’s truck and freight vehicle manufacture, is technically a separate entity from Volvo Cars Australia. Volvo Group, the international branch of the freight business, wants to have 35 per cent of its fleet electrified by 2030, with an all-electric goal of 2040.
But in Australia, it won’t be as simple as beginning production. In The Driven’s article, it’s mentioned that Volvo’s locally produced electric trucks will be dependent on design rules that don’t currently support their development.
The current maximum truck width in Australia is 2.5 metres, but according to Merrick, this means that Volvo electric trucks will need special permits, as they’re 2.5 centimetres over the 2.5-metre threshold. This is the case with electric Volvo trucks in Australia at the moment.
The volume of trucks produced at the Wacol facility will also depend heavily on if width and axel regulations can be changed, according to Volvo Group Australia’s Vice President of emerging technology business development, Paul Illmer.
“It’s mainly the front axel weight that’s holding us back… It’s currently 6.5 tonnes but we would need that to be 7.1 to 7.5 tonnes to allow for the extra battery weight,” Illmer said, as reported by The Driven.
I very much welcome Volvo’s electric trucks kicking off development in 2027. Australia has the makings of an electric car industry, as was a big focus of submissions to the National Electric Vehicle Strategy, and although freight vehicles are an adjacent manufacturing business, it gives us a glimpse at what we could get for local EV development.
Volvo Group Australia is planning to launch its prime mover FH Electric truck later this year in Australia.