Vienna / Bratislava, 15 June 2021 – Voltia, the European leader in electrified urban delivery, is completing the prototype of a refrigerated version of the Nissan eNV200 XL Voltia e-van. It is being developed as a part of two research projects in Austria: ZERO Logistics and CONSERVE, supported by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency – FFG and Klima & Energie Fonds. Through these projects, Voltia cooperates with a number of research partners – Johannes Kepler University of Linz, IESTA, AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Technische Universität Wien, high-tech companies such as PRODUCTBLOKS or HiWiTronics and logistics professionals as i-log or Energie Ingenieure Consulting. The company has already started testing the functional prototype. Now after recently receiving all the necessary certifications, it should go into full operation. The van has the potential to succeed in the pharmaceuticals and food delivery sectors.
First testing partner has been the Austrian-based bio food producer company Biohof Achleitner from Eferding in Upper Austria. “We are extremely happy to be able to have combined the advantages of emission-free transport with natural refrigerant cooling technology,” said Juraj Ulehla, Voltia´s CEO.
Peter Scheuermann, who leads the research group at AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, adds: “Electric cooling vans will play an important role in the near future, especially for the city logistics and it is important to supply the cooling system directly from the high voltage battery to keep efficiency as high as possible. I am happy to support this project in the system integration part with AIT´s EV power electronics competences.”
The vehicle is officially registered in Austria, is insulated according to EU standards and legislations. “The first certified and commercially available R290 (propane) transport refrigeration technology by PRODUCTBLOKS is directly driven by the traction battery of the vehicle. It replaces the high GWP refrigerants currently on the market providing real zero-emission operation. The one-of-its-kind solution has the highest volumetric efficiency with the lowest weight maximizing the payload of the vehicle,” explains Filip Kitanoski, the founder & CEO of PRODUCTBLOKS. Intelligent predictive control ensures efficient and fast door-opening temperature recovery. Digital services monitoring the condition of the unit shall enable a resilient operation of the system ensuring operational excellence for the fleet operators. The piloting of the solution is expected to provide the pathway for a ground-breaking development in the segment of temperature controlled electric vehicles.
As a matter of fact, in general, converted cooling vehicles based on diesel engines double their economic and ecological footprint, expressed in a significantly deteriorated WLTP test result (average consumption for some vehicles after conversion goes up from so far officially accepted e.g. 11 l/100 km to appr. 22 l/100 km), so far authorities accept the lower level in case those conversions are done after first registration, even if that value is far away from reality. In the future, it is expected that also those thousands of temperature controlled vehicles will have to show the right test/WLTP result, this will end up in significantly higher prices.
According to available information and Voltia estimates, each year around 60,000 new refrigerated light commercial vehicles (LCVs) are being sold in Europe. Nearly all existing solutions are powered by diesel engines. These are equipped with refrigeration units with high global warming potential factor of more than 1’300 CO2 equivalents having unacceptable direct and indirect emissions. To address this problem, Voltia went into a cooperation with high-tech companies and research partners to develop a green, emission-free transport refrigeration solution. This solution, developed within the ZERO Logistics project, comprises the whole process of the green transformation of a logistics system: starting from an in-depth analysis of the transport fleet, the logistics processes and the energy system over the simulation of the whole system and working out the optimised solution for the emission-free refrigerated transport system.
The mentioned projects, for which the partners received a total of EUR 3.3 million from the federal Ministry for Climate Action started in 2019 and they end in Q4 this year 2021.
The company has been operating on the Austrian market since 2015 (as Voltia AT), when it leased its first electric van to a customer in Linz and, together with its sister company Greenway, completed an e-mobility tour there. In the following years, it electrified a number of fleets in Austria. Together with leading companies, it participated in projects, like the LEEFF flagship project, to support electromobility, and reduce emissions in transport. In 2017, it won the VCÖ Mobilitätpreis Wien award on the local market for its innovative approach to transport and the environment (joint project VCÖ, City of Vienna and ÖBB). Currently, the first testing with the IKEA Vösendorf logistics division is underway. In the last two years, the company has been continuing the above mentioned LEEFF project, starting to sell conversions of the e-NV200 model, and testing in companies such as Metro, Stroeck or GLS.
In May 2020, the Nissan eNV200 XL Voltia was included in the official portfolio of the global carmaker Nissan.
About Voltia
Voltia is a European e-mobility specialist based in Bratislava, Slovakia. With the mission to help make commercial e-mobility effective and affordable, it supports OEMs by broadening the usability of their mass-market electric LCV models. Voltia’s approach is to add value in terms of application-specific re-design for different purposes. It provides development know-how, vehicle structure engineering, prototyping, production set-up, and sales & marketing support. It has clients in 17 European countries. Voltia has won numerous awards, including 2016 EU Sustainable Energy Week Champion, 2017 Vienna Business Agency ground-breaking innovation, and 2018 Top10 mobility startup in Europe by the European Startup Prize. Their e-vans already operate successfully in large urban environments, such as London, Paris, Nice, Marseille, The Hague, Dortmund, Barcelona, Vienna, Warsaw, Prague, Tallinn, Kiev or Bratislava. More details at www.voltia.com.