Driving Volvo’s VNR Electric

If you’ve heard that electric trucks are fast off the line, you’ve heard right. The motor in this Volvo VNRe makes gobs of torque right from the start, and healthy horsepower ably keeps up road speed.

The motor, set between four big battery boxes on the frame rails, is rated at 455 hp and can produce as much as 4,051 pound-feet of torque, according to Andy Brown, product manager for this model. He showed me the demonstrator box truck at Volvo Trucks’ Customer Center, adjacent to the assembly plant in Dublin, Va., where it was assembled.

But “torque is electronically limited or you’d be spinning the drive tires,” he said, “and that wouldn’t help the truck’s business case.”

This VNR (R for regional) electric is a 4×2 straight truck that can be optioned as a 6×4 or 6×2 tandem. Also available are tractor versions in the same axle configurations. Long-haul is still in the mix, but that’s another story.

Our demo vehicle resembled a lot of box trucks on America’s roads except that, with a Class 7 chassis rated at 33,000 pounds gross vehicle weight, it’s heavier and looks bulkier. And the cab’s special electric green hue and box’s complementing graphics provide distinction in a truck world dominated by boring white.

Tilt the hood and you’ll find a bunch of electrical gear – controllers and regulators to step voltage up and down – plus a liquid cooling system for the batteries, which heat up while they’re being charged or sending current to the motor.

Operating voltage is 600, by the way, so don’t cut into any orange cables. Under the hood, of course, is where a diesel engine would otherwise reside.

The Volvo VNRe is incredibly quiet – another characteristic of electric propulsion. The electric motor runs through a two-speed I-Shift automated transmission, which changes from first to second at 20 mph, then back to first while slowing.

While driving, I never felt the gearbox shift up or down – operation was that smooth. Except at very low speeds, where there’s a bit of a whine, I couldn’t hear the motor because tire and road sounds drown out anything mechanical or electrical.

As you’d expect from a Volvo, there’s very little noise inside, because the roomy, comfortable cab is well built and insulated. In fact, any squeaks or rattles would become irritants that a driver would not notice in a diesel-powered truck. Happily, there were none in this vehicle.

Range will vary with load, terrain, and a driver’s habits, Brown explained, but is advertised as 230 miles for this 4×2 straight truck.

The four lithium-ion battery packs together are rated at 377 kilowatt-hours. Two more packs can be set on the frame behind the cab and add another 188 kWh and about 45 miles of range. The alternator and air and A/C compressors are run by electric motors.

A savvy driver can use a “retard” control on a stalk fixed to the steering column. Four settings, from zero to three, govern the amount of braking force applied by the motor, thereby increasing or decreasing the amount of kinetic energy converted to electricity and sent to the batteries – something that’s also known as regenerative braking.

In position three, I could slow the truck almost to a stop. This is comparable to engine brakes on a diesel, so wear on the service brakes should be reduced. Surprisingly, Volvo’s specs say only 5 to 15% of braking energy is turned into electricity.

While the cab’s interior was normal enough, the dashboard was somewhat bare. Three pushbuttons, for drive, neutral and reverse, operated the automated transmission, and a standard yellow-faced valve operated the air parking brakes.

Gauges include a speedometer, air pressure, and two battery charge indicators, so there’d be no excuse for a driver running out of juice while out on a route. That shouldn’t happen because the idea is to plan operations within a truck’s range and for it to return each night to plug in and recharge.

With the right equipment, that can be done in an hour or two or over several hours using slow charging.

Most Volvo VNRe trucks now in use are in California, where clean air authorities award hefty monetary grants – $120,000 per truck and sometimes more – to buyers.

Some locales in the Midwest and Northeast also are offering such inducements ranging from $30,000 to $185,000. “They’re going where the incentives are,” Brown said of VNRe sales. Maintenance costs promise to be far less than for diesel trucks – another advantage.

But the truck weighs about 22,500 pounds empty, 2,000 pounds more than a diesel version, leaving 10,500 pounds of payload capacity.

And it’s expensive, about twice the cost of a diesel VNR. So it’s government grants to the financial rescue, and the zero-emissions vehicles can help clean up the environment (though there’s controversy over where and how materials are mined and batteries and other components are manufactured, and also about how an electric utility generates the power to recharge those batteries).

For the driving experience, we took several loops around the facility’s dog-bone-shaped paved track and then left the premises for some real-world byways.

Brown directed me toward the types of roads I wanted to cover, starting with city streets and country two-lane highways, where I found that the VNRe blended in well with light midday traffic.

Hard cornering was never a problem because of the VNR’s tight turning radius, and outward visibility was always excellent, so backing up was easy.

At one point, we circled through a subdivision as though we were making a delivery of furniture or whatever, and Brown observed that the truck was so quiet that we could have done this in the wee hours without disturbing the neighbors.

Then we got on nearby Interstate 81, where the truck accelerated briskly to 55 mph – and there it stayed, the speedo’s needle seemingly glued to the double nickel.

“It’ll do 68,” he said, “but it’s now limited to 55.”

This was for safety since this was a demonstrator subject to driving by people who were not experienced with trucks. At 55, we were 10 to 15 mph slower than everyone else, and cars and trucks sailed by us.

So I got off at the next exit and soon returned to roads where the going was slower. Obviously, e-truck buyers need to spec parameters for real-world conditions.

For now, I’d be a happy driver if I were assigned to a VNRe. If I were an owner-operator, I’d probably be wary of buying one until the fleets get a lot more experience with electric trucks and prove out the concept. Then, assuming I could get some of that government money, where do I sign? LL