Making Cities Work Harder but Safer

For a moniker best known for making some of the safest cars of the world, Volvo Trucks is following suit with making some of the safest heavy vehicles in the world. But they are not stopping there. Now, a new paradigm has been raised to the same level of importance; environmental sustainability.

Innovation doesn’t come just from advancement in technology but also from reshaping age-old SOPs to birth efficiency. The Gothenburg based company is now building trucks with tomorrow’s tech but with real world application today.

Key to all of this is the invitation for businesses to rewrite their strategies to allow round the clock operation, particularly to move delivery times, as well as other activities involving trucks, to later part of the night right through to the wee hours of the morning.

The benefits should be crystal clear; for large cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg, London, Paris, and Rome, all of which appears in Business Insider’s list of “10 most congested cities in the world”, removing heavy truck traffic should have a positive effect on the roads during the day.

A study by the European Commission reveals that fatigue is the main cause behind 10-25 percent of crashes and this move will allow these truck drivers to feel fresher, not having to compete with other vehicles for road space.

Secondly, we can look forward to a cleaner future as the introduction of electric-mobility in trucks will result in less pollutants.

In the ultra-rapid developing cities of Eastern China, where the Air Pollution Index averages between moderate to unhealthy, this new development couldn’t come any sooner. And if Volvo Trucks can spearhead this from Sweden, eventually the technology will spread.

In this interview, we speak to Mitchell Peden, Managing Director of Volvo Trucks Malaysia about how the company is leading the way by building trucks with a focus on “environmental care and safety side of things”.