This week, Volvo Group held its once-every-three-years “Volvo Days” occasion in Shippensburg, PA for the primary time for the reason that pandemic, exhibiting off tons (actually!) of recent tools, new vehicles, and new ideas – together with a few “world’s first” debuts.
What’s Volvo Days? Which may require a little bit of background …
The heavy tools world operates on one thing of a three-year cycle. ConExpo, the trade’s largest commerce present, occurs each three years. That units the tone, with corporations exhibiting off all their hottest ideas and forward-thinking new initiatives. That’s 12 months 1. Yr 2 is usually when reveals like Volvo Days usually happen, with producers rolling out the manufacturing variations of the ideas they confirmed at ConExpo and welcoming a mixture of sellers, end-users, and journalists in to check out a few of what obtained confirmed at ConExpo. Yr 3 is extra insular, with the producers bringing in salespeople to get them educated on new merchandise and put together them for methods to speak about what the corporate is planning to indicate at subsequent 12 months’s ConExpo.
ConExpo was final 12 months, so this 12 months we get Volvo Days – for the primary time since 2018, in reality, for the reason that 2021 occasion was canceled as a consequence of COVID. That makes this the primary Volvo Days in six years … and expectations have been excessive.
The kickoff
Volvo kicked off the week’s occasions with a drone show highlighting the corporate’s development tools historical past – acceptable, on condition that the occasion was held at Volvo CE’s Pennsylvania engineering and manufacturing campus. The drone present was adopted by a genuinely spectacular, extremely choreographed tools ballet that featured new electrical tools proven for the primary time in North America, in addition to the new-for-2025 Volvo VNL and Mack MD Electrical vehicles doing a little heavy lifting and hauling.
The present lasted properly over thirty minutes, and it was inconceivable for me to maintain monitor of all the pieces that was occurring, however you will get a way of it within the video (above).
Compact electrical tools
Volvo had its new, in-production L20/120 Electrical wheel loader and ECR25 Electrical excavator entrance and middle in its reception middle, together with info highlighting their aggressive benefits within the compact tools area.
The perfect factor about Volvo Days, nevertheless, isn’t that they’ve attention-grabbing automobiles on show – it’s the truth that almost each a type of attention-grabbing automobiles is accessible to expertise first hand … together with the 30-ton EC230 Electrical excavator.
All the electrical excavators (even the mini) have been extremely clean and quiet, with noticeably fewer vibrations than their diesel counterparts … which we additionally obtained to play with.
That mentioned, I’m not a “actual” tools operator, which suggests my seat of the pants impressions are in all probability value lower than these of the individuals who use this stuff on daily basis. That’s why I used to be glad to have Mike Switzer, my co-host on The Heavy Tools Podcast, alongside for the trip.
“It’s actually spectacular, and the articulation on the Steelwrist is unimaginable,” Mike instructed me, after hopping out of the demo EC230. “I’ve seen it earlier than, clearly, however I’ve by no means had an opportunity to make use of it. I feel each municipality wants to try that.”
Electrical compaction
Over on the compaction facet, Volvo had its DD25 Electrical vibrating drum compactor on show – the place the all-electric tandem curler was joined by two all-new siblings being proven off for the primary time ever: a pre-production DD15 Electrical “mini” compactor prototype seemingly designed for sidewalks and driveways, and the TC13 Electrical trench compactor.
The TC13 Electrical is designed as a walk-behind unit that makes use of its heavy batteries to supply the compaction mass – however these heavy batteries received’t get depleted within the hour or so of operation that the majority trench compactors see on a busy day. To maintain the little TC13 helpful all through the day, Volvo gave it a pair of 110 and 220V retailers.
Specs weren’t launched, however Volvo’s compaction model supervisor claimed these retailers have been greater than able to maintaining the remainder of the job web site’s battery-operated instruments working all day lengthy, and even packed sufficient juice (in a pinch) to energy a conveyable workplace, desk noticed, or drill press.
“Did you see his face once I requested if it might run an arc welder?” requested Mike, smiling. “He mentioned, ‘It’s not one thing we’d advise,’ however you possibly can inform he favored that query.”
Yeah, he did!
Electrek’s Take
Someplace across the twenty minute mark of the “tools ballet” present, one thing broke inside my mind. I feel it was the sparks flying off the bucket when the L20 Electrical scooped up a number of thousand kilos of gravel and sand at full pace, scraping its bucket alongside the bottom. Possibly it was the hydrogen-powered articulated loader, or the open bar.
Regardless, one factor that was made very clear at Volvo Days ’24 is that, whereas different corporations are nonetheless creating the preliminary entries into the electrical business car area, Volvo has not only a full line of merchandise – however an increasing line of merchandise, with the corporate coming into new areas particularly due to the distinctive benefits electrical provides.
As Volvo’s North American President, Scott Younger, explains, the longer term is electrical, and Volvo’s imaginative and prescient for the longer term has the corporate firmly within the management place … however extra on that partly 2.
ORIGINAL CONTENT FROM ELECTREK.
FTC: We use revenue incomes auto affiliate hyperlinks. Extra.
