Charging the Future of Transport with Circularity - Volvo Energy's Kristina Nilsson

Volvo Energy, the newest business arm of the Volvo Group, is accelerating electrification with a full lifecycle approach. In a Reuters event, 'Plugged in Strategies for Scaling Up EV Charging Infrastructure', Kristina Nilsson, Head of Charging and Infrastructure Solutions, explains what the group is doing to empower its customers and calls for action from partners and beyond.

The Volvo Group drives prosperity through transport and infrastructure solutions. It offers trucks, buses, construction equipment, and power solutions for marine and industrial applications, financing and services, all to increase customer uptime and productivity, says Nilsson.

Volvo Energy is dedicated to accelerating electrification and circularity. Nilsson says customers want to know if there are products, profit and charging infrastructure.

"We have the products. We have the technology. We have been producing in serial production, fully electric trucks since 2019. We can do half of all existing transport missions. The costs are higher when the volumes are lower and we need incentives. However, you can see examples where we have electric vehicles that are more profitable than diesel parity," she says.

Volvo Energy And Charging Infrastructure

The next big challenge is for charging infrastructure.

"We must come together to ensure that the customers will have access to green high-performing charging infrastructure," says Nilsson.

"We need to get the whole ecosystem invloved including but not limited to governments, municipalities, and companies, grid companies, truck stop operators, shorters, OEMs, as well as the commercial vehicle industry, because it takes the entire value chain to come into place," she adds.

Volvo Energy has several partnerships, and supports customers to build up the charging infrastructure at their home depot.

In a joint venture with Daimler Truck, and the TRATON GROUP, it will build up 1700 charge points across Europe. It also has a strategic partnership with Pilot, Flying J and the Pilot Company in North America with over 750 locations across North America to build charging infrastructure.

Volvo has the ambition in sustainability from a customer and societal perspective to reach 100% safe 100% fossil-free and 100% more productive solutions, she notes.

Volvo Group And Volvo Energy Full Circle

Volvo Group is moving from a linear to a circular model in society. For circularity, Volvo Energy is working with the full lifecycle of the batteries. Batteries are monitored to decide when to remove them from vehicles. Volvo assesses the best use for each battery, based on the data collected and history, Nilsson says.

Even when the battery is insufficient for demanding commercial vehicle applications, it has many years of value in other applications. In this way, it extends both the use of the batteries and generates environmental benefits in other parts of the economy, such as renewable power generation, vehicle-to-grid, peak shaving and load shifting.

"With Volvo Group and Volvo Energy we take a full-lifecycle approach," she says.

Volvo Energy invested in UK-based second-life battery energy storage specialist Connected Energy. Volvo Penta invested in UIG, US-based specialists in innovative utility systems and decentralized energy solutions.

What is the Future of Charging Infrastructure?

Nilsson admits charging infrastructure has room for improvement. However, charging technologies are ready to scale now.

"We need to accelerate industry standards, especially in the area of the protocols to make sure that we have the automatic authentication methods for our customers and also payment and the related services around route planning, find book and pay applications," says Nilsson.

She encourages building up networks as soon as possible.

"We do not have time to wait. We have maturity enough to scale the charging technologies. So we need to bring a seamless, integrated charging experience to customers. We need to bring peace of mind to our customers. We need to make sure that we build up this network. We will learn as we do so with all new technologies in all new areas. That's how it works," she concludes.