Trova Commercial Vehicles has launched a battery-electric terminal truck, the company’s first product to reach the market, and CEO Patrick Collignon sat down with Charged to talk about it.
Terminal trucks are semi-tractor vehicles designed to move semi-trailers within a warehouse facility, cargo yard or intermodal facility.
“One of the unique sides of Trova is its leadership team,” Collignon told Charged, explaining that the team includes several former senior executives of Volvo, owner of Mack Trucks—among them the former President of Mack Trucks and an Executive Vice President of Volvo.
Another unique attribute Collignon mentioned was Trova‘s enterprise model, which is based on a constellation of subject-matter-expert companies. “We refer to it as a multi-stakeholder model, similar to the Japanese keiretsu,” Collignon said. Keiretsu refers to the Japanese model of an interdependent group of companies, each with its own banking partner, manufacturers, distributors and supply chain partners. He added that this network was incubated in 2014 and has been responsible for several achievements, the launch of Trova being one of them.
“We were accompanied on our journey by two strategic partner companies: Netgroup, an automotive engineering firm, and Chateau Energy Solutions, with whom we offer complete infrastructure solutions including EV charging stations, to our customers,” Collignon told us.
“The terminal tractor’s chassis has been designed from the ground up for our high-voltage driveline,” he added, noting that the battery packs were located inside the chassis rails. Trova believes this approach assists with overall safety and vehicle stability. The company does not use rail-mounted battery packs, to avoid exposure to side-impact accidents and reduce the amount of structural steel needed to mount the battery packs, which in turn reduces the overall weight of the vehicle.
Collignon also said that “the HV architecture consists of 5 pre-assembled modules, which not only reduces assembly time but also improves accessibility for aftermarket maintenance and repair.”
The vehicle is equipped with a full-width cab with room for a second seat, an unusual feature for such trucks, but one Collignon said had been designed based on feedback from potential customers. This included discussions with tractor terminal drivers who complained about a cramped workspace or insufficient space for driver training. Trova’s is the most spacious cab in the industry, Collignon said.
Trova worked with the Industrial Design department at Virginia Tech in designing the cab, which includes a space frame, a platform cab with structural integrity built into the space frame, and side impact bars that double as ergonomic arm rests. The interior height is above the industry norm, allowing a person who is 6 feet tall to stand up at the entrance, while the front windshield and side windows lean forward to offer improved low-speed visibility in inclement weather, Collignon said.
“The climate control of the cab is integrated into the proprietary thermal management system and offers air conditioning as a standard feature,” he added.
Collignon told us the truck is the first vehicle in its market segment to use axial flux motors. “These motors are very compact, with high performance and fewer magnets, which translates to less impact on the environment thanks to less reliance on rare earth metals.” The system‘s nominal voltage is 660 V.
As for the company’s name, Trova, this reporter asked whether this might have been taken from the Latin verb for “to find.” Collignon enthusiastically confirmed this, saying, “We seek to find solutions to accelerate the market acceptance of battery-electric commercial vehicles.”
Source: Trova Commercial Vehicles
