Eighteen months after being bought out of administration by New York-based hedge fund Luxor Capital Group, electric vehicle start-up Volta Trucks is bankrupt after failing to raise sufficient funding.
The news comes after Volta Trucks chief executive Essa Al-Saleh, recently revealed plans to resume production focusing on four critical markets – UK, Germany, France and Scandinavia.
Essa also promised the resumption of live customer trials in the UK, with a fleet of 15 vehicles, which he said would shortly be available across other markets, and added that the company was aiming to provide first customer deliveries by the end of this year.
However, these plans were derailed last week when the manufacturer, which had been struggling to secure sufficient investment to keep it afloat, announced it had filed for bankruptcy
Staff took to social media this week to announce the collapse of the company. Volta Trucks procurement and supply chain director Fraser McBeth said the company had struggled to raise enough capital in a difficult economic climate.
Writing on LinkedIn, McBeth said: “Launching a start-up is hard enough, never mind one fresh out of bankruptcy, but who doesn’t love an underdog story? In December 2023, that’s the opportunity myself and 100 other people were given.
“’We have four months’ cash, can you try and rebuild this business while we fundraise?’ That was the mission, everyone fully aware that security wasn’t a given, that the challenge had become substantially harder, and on top we still needed to raise the money needed to actually get into series production again. But we all dived in.
“All things considered, it led to amazing results, getting pilots back on the road, reforming our supply chain to restart small scale production, and getting traction with potential investors. But ultimately the challenge was too great and time was never on our side.
“Volta didn’t fail again, it just wasn’t successful in restarting - we needed much more capital and unfortunately fundraising the level of money we needed, especially in the current climate isn’t easy.”
Kjell Waloen, co-founder of Volta Trucks, told Euorpean investor news service Impact Loop: “We were incredibly close to signing with a new financier – it looked very promising – but it fell through at the last moment.”
Volta Trucks business development manager, Carla Detrieux, responding to scores of sympathetic messages posted on LinkedIn this week, said: “Thank you all for the outpouring support and the “avalanche of love”.
“Official communications and reflections will follow soon from Volta Trucks’ company page. Sincere thank you to my incredible work family, our investors, suppliers, customers, and the many partners and sponsors who believed in us around the world.”
Launched in 2019 Volta Trucks made rapid progress, securing over 300 customer orders by January 2023, worth an estimated £75m, for the production and 2023 delivery of its 16-tonne all-electric Volta Truck.
The company also managed to attract some top industry talent including Claes Nilsson, former Volvo Trucks president and Dr Karl Viktor Schaller, former MAN chief technology officer.
Volta also signed deals with large logistics firms, including DPD and DSV, to trial its trucks, and secured a rental and leasing deal with vehicle hire giant Petit Forestier for refrigerated versions of the 16-tonne and 18-tonne Volta Zero in the UK and Europe.
However, by October 2023 the electric truck manufacturer had hit the ropes, filing for bankruptcy and appointing administrators, citing the collapse of its battery supplier Proterra as having a “significant impact” on its manufacturing plans, reducing the volume of vehicles that it had forecast to produce and hampering its ability to raise capital.
Just three months later Volta Trucks appeared to rise from the ashes after being purchased by Luxor Capital, in a deal that heralded a second chance for the manufacturer, but which sadly came to an end last week.
