Cleaning Up The Streets - Volvo Introduces Electric Refuse Truck

It's been an interesting couple of weeks for zero emission vehicles. We've had news of the massive achievement in electric bus adoption across China, the first Fuel Cell bus in Hawaii, orders for Nikola's Fuel Cell trucks in the US and the adoption of electric vans for package delivery by the Royal Mail and UPS.

So news of the introduction of an electric refuse truck by Volvo is timely. Like buses and delivery vehicles, refuse trucks spend huge amounts of time on the road, consuming a disproportionate amount of fuel and produce Carbon Dioxide and particulate emissions.

Volvo estimates that its new vehicle will run a full eight to ten hour shift from one charge and will recharge from empty in just ninety minutes. The vehicles will roll out to Hamburg first, Germany's second city having a strong record of pushing low emission solutions and is already using Volvo's own electric bus in some areas of the city.