UK FIRM TEVVA UNVEILS NEW ELECTRIC TRUCK

Electric truck pioneer Tevva has unveiled a 7.5-tonne electric truck intended for mass production in the UK.

Engineered by a team led by Ken Scott, formerly engineering director at Bentley and Alexander Dennis, and styled by Dale Grewer, former chief designer at Jaguar Land Rover, the Tevva Truck will be manufactured in a brand-new 11,000 m2 facility in the London Thames Freeport area.

With production due to start in July 2022 the organization expects to be manufacturing 3,000 trucks a year by 2023, an effort that it said will create an additional 1,000 skilled mechanical, software, engineering, and manufacturing jobs over the next 24 months.

Engineered to enable fleet operators to make a smooth transition to electrification the truck’s pure battery-electric range of 160 miles (250 km) is enhanced by the use of a hydrogen fuel cell range extender, that boosts the vehicle’s range to 310 miles (500km).

Able to carry up to 16 euro pallets and over two tonnes payload at 7.5-tonnes Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW), the new truck is Tevva’s third-generation vehicle and represents the culmination of seven years of engineering development and over 200,000 miles (350,000 km) of in-fleet trials.

According to Tevva, the total cost of ownership will be comparable to a diesel truck, with parity achieved at approximately 3,000km or when 500 liters of diesel is consumed per month.

The truck has been unveiled to address the immediate industry need to electrify, with the United Kingdom and Europe committed to a target of net-zero emissions by 2050 alongside a proposed ban on the sale of all polluting vehicles by 2035.

Asher Bennett, Founder, and CEO of Tevva said: “Technology is transforming the commercial vehicle sector at pace, making it safer, greener, and entirely more efficient. But meaningful change is a gradual process, it must happen one step at a time, even if those changes are needed in fast succession.

“The Tevva Truck provides a natural transition into electrification for fleet managers, providing total peace of mind and a compelling total cost of ownership proposition, with no compromise on range and reliability and minimized compromise on the payload.”