Volvo Trucks has previewed a zero emission, driverless, cabless tractor unit, at its Innovation Summit in Berlin this week.
Known as Vera (the Swedish word for faith), the fully electric truck is designed to carry out repetitive, short distance journeys, such as shunting trailers at ports, terminals or large distribution centres. It will be driven autonomously be operators in a control tower.
Using the same Volvo bus-derived driveline as the recently shown eFL and eFE trucks, it is expected to have a range in excess of 100km. When it comes to market, customers will be able to choose how many batteries they require. It uses 150kW inductive charging, and will charge from empty in under four hours.
Speaking at the world premier, Mikael Karlsson, vice president of autonomous solutions at Volvo Trucks, explained that Vera was developed in cooperation with several customers, who will now be trialling it.