Sweden’s Volta Raises $260M… to get it’s all-electric trucks into production by the end of this year

Volta Trucks — the Swedish electric vehicle startup that believes it can build better urban delivery vehicles and other trucks that are safer and take up a smaller carbon footprint than their gas-guzzling, more clumsy, existing counterparts has closed a big round of funding to help it through that last mile of work before its Volta Zero trucks go into commercial production later this year.

The company has raised $260 million, a Series C round of funding that appears to value the company at just over $490 million.

Volta will be using the money to fund engineering and business operations ahead of its first trucks rolling off the assembly line, on the back of what looks like a healthy list of customers:

Volta said that its pre-order book for its all-electric Volta Zero — said to be the first fully electric, purpose-built commercial freight vehicle designed for urban freight distribution — is currently totaling over €1.2 billion, covering more than 5,000 vehicles.

Volta’s wider business strategy will be based both on selling trucks as well as offering its vehicles on a trucking-as-a-service model.

New York-based Luxor Capital, which led the company’s €37 million Series B in September 2021, is also leading this round.

Real estate investment firm Byggmästare Anders J Ahlström (like Volta, based in Stockholm), supply chain services giant Agility, and B-FLEXION (formerly Waypoint Capital) also participated.

While Volta has not disclosed its valuation, Pitchbook data notes that it is now just over $490 million — a figure that we have now confirmed also with sources close to the company.

Volta’s growth, and a large amount of capital it has now raised — over $325 million to date — are part of a bigger sea change in the automotive world.

Startups, tapping into new manufacturing techniques, new battery technology, and new energy infrastructure, see a ripe opportunity to build new vehicles to disrupt the current status quo with safer and cleaner alternatives.