How the Volvo FMX compares as a diesel or electric truck

Electric is coming. This will be no shock as electric car arguments currently dominate the motoring coverage in the mainstream and specialist press. And maybe 95% of the truck news stories that come our way are battery electric vehicle (BEV) related, even though they still only account for around 1% of the trucks on the road, as manufacturers scramble to recover the considerable investment most of them have made to satisfy the legislative and environmental pressure on them. An electric truck has even won the prestigious International Truck of the Year (IToY) award.

Until now, most of our electric truck driving experience has been under controlled conditions on manufacturer test tracks and industry proving grounds. So we decided to take one of the pioneering vehicles, one that is actually available to buy or otherwise acquire, and compare it head-to-head with a diesel stablemate in real-world conditions, on the same route, on the same day, and with the same driver and load. The manufacturer that was able to provide such a pair of vehicles was the winner of that IToY award, Volvo Trucks, but not with the victorious FH Electric. Instead, we chose the tipper sector, where a number of operators are already evaluating the electric FMX in mixed fleets. Our diesel benchmark was an 8x4 FMX.

Neither truck came as a plain vanilla tipper, with features that prevented them from being directly comparable in terms of payload. While we’ve quoted the actual weights and payloads as tested, we’ve also included the baseline bare chassis weights for comparison. The diesel version was an FMX 460 8x4 with a day cab on the X-high chassis height and B-ride steel suspension all round. The steel body is from Thompsons, but was augmented by a Palfinger Epsilon grab with a rotating clamshell bucket. As tested, its unladen weight with a 75kg driver was 16,160kg, giving a payload of 15,740kg. 

The electric rival was rather further removed from everyday tipper spec. With limited access to early BEVs, Volvo has had to provide a demonstrator that ticks many boxes. It’s no secret that Volvo has an eye on one of 2024’s most prestigious and potentially lucrative contracts, to supply the replacements for the Home Office’s existing New Dimension fleet of national resilience support vehicles, currently comprising over 300 two decade-old MAN 6x2s. These can carry a variety of demountable pods to cope with different emergency scenarios.

So while it had a similar Thompsons steel tipper body to the diesel, it was attached to a Multilift hook-loader. But no conventional tipper operator would specify such a device. Not only does the weight go through the roof, but tipping the load off is not the work of a moment; you go through a convoluted process of sliding and raising the mechanism in the right order. It’s worth mentioning here that while many electric trucks have an additional weight allowance of up to two tonnes, that doesn’t apply to 3-axle tractors and 4-axle rigids, a fact that has more to do with axle loadings than anything else. On the day, the empty FMX Electric sat on Cullimore’s weighbridge at 20,140kg. However, a more realistic figure for just a plain Thompsons steel-bodied tipper would be 16,200kg.

Incidentally, observant readers may have spotted a small array of solar panels at the front corner of the body. This is not an emergency back-up for the driveline batteries, but serves to power the load sheeting system.

The other major difference between the two trucks is the chassis layout, with the electric version needing to be based on a Tridem chassis to create enough space for the batteries – five in this case.

The great imponderable! Attempts to discuss the true cost of operating any electric vehicles inevitably run into those three words: “It all depends”. Volvo is certainly no exception, but in fairness, it’s a truck builder and not an energy supplier.

At the time of writing, the public charging network for heavy-duty trucks in the UK, and indeed throughout Europe, is essentially non-existent, a couple of small pilot projects notwithstanding. In fact, we’re tiring of the European automotive manufacturers’ body ACEA making its increasingly desperate annual plea to European governments to facilitate the provision of the essential open-road infrastructure.

But we are where we are, so just like the early days of petrol engines, when vehicle owners had to go to a pharmacy with a can to buy motor spirit, at the moment potential electric truck operators must make their own arrangements. These will, of course, be centred on their own operating bases, but the need for mid-journey top-up charges during the loading and unloading process and driving breaks will require charging at major customer locations.

So to get an independent appraisal of charging options, we asked leading infrastructure provider Vital EV for some facts and figures. Vital EV is already known to us as the EV charging provider for the ride and drive operation at Road Transport Expo.

Head of marketing Liam Campbell told us: “The cost of electric truck charging largely depends on the use-case scenario as the charging speed has the greatest influence on the price of the charger, the installation, and the ongoing maintenance plans to maximise uptime and availability.” For example, a 50kW standalone DC charger has an upfront cost of around £12,000 with installation and is well-suited to most overnight charging applications – charging the smaller 180kWh FMX battery in around four hours.

As the maximum charging speed of the Volvo FMX Electric is 250kW (achieving a full charge in 2.5 hours) a 250kW charger is far more cost-effective (as this power is still available as a standalone unit, rather than a hub-and-spoke solution) at around £50,000 including installation.

The cost of charging is the big variable, depending on your tariff. On a standard tariff of 28p per kWh, it will cost about £150 to fully charge the large battery FMX Electric (for 300km range). However, a flexible tariff user can reduce this to £54 by charging during off-peak times (as little as 10p per kWh) with Vital EV’s scheduled charging service.

As with the vehicle, having an effective aftersales support programme in place is paramount to achieving maximum uptime and availability, and annual service plans, which include remote charger monitoring, cost from around £700 to £2,000 annually for the examples specified.

- This article was first published in the 18 January issue of Commercial Motor.