Volvo’s revamped VNL Class 8 tractor. (Volvo Trucks North America)
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Volvo Trucks is targeting a 25% North American heavy-duty truck market share by 2030, according to executives at the company.
Volvo Trucks North America won a 10% share of Class 8 retail sales in 2023 while Mack Trucks captured a 6.8% share, according to Wards Intelligence data.
“Our ambition is for Volvo Trucks to have a 15% market share in North America. And it will happen,” company president Roger Alm said Nov. 14, while Mack is targeting a 10% slice of the pie.
“The untapped potential is huge in North America, and we have all the possibilities to make this happen now,” Alm told analysts during Volvo Trucks parent company Volvo Group’s Capital Markets Day in Dublin, Va.
VTNA relaunched its flagship semi, the VNL, in January and Mack is planning a similar if not more radical transformation of its key on-highway tractor in 2025, Mack President Stephen Roy revealed at the event.
The breakthrough aerodynamic design and next-gen technology found in every #AllNewVolvoVNL deliver mile after mile of unrivaled fuel efficiency. pic.twitter.com/C2OBRXARD9
— Volvo Trucks North America (@VolvoTrucksNA) October 16, 2024
“I really see this for Mack as an industry disrupter,” said Roy. “We go from a product that’s a fairly old product from a foundational standpoint to a premium product that will absolutely allow us to compete in 70% of the market.”
“We think we can triple our [longhaul] market share with the new product,” Mack’s top executive said, adding that the new flagship tractor, an expansion of Volvo Group’s North American truck production capacity and the end to supply chain woes would see Mack’s Class 8 market share vault the 10% barrier by 2030.
Volvo Group plans to open a truck production plant in Mexico for the first time in 2026 and bought Commercial Vehicle Group’s Kings Mountain, N.C., cab assembly plant, which had been slow in supplying bodies-in-white to Mack.
Volvo Group paid around $40 million for the Kings Mountain plant, adding 230 employees as a result. Mack already started to see improvements in total production as a result of the acquisition of the cab plant, Roy said during a presentation at the Capital Markets Day.
Roy’s counterpart at VTNA, Peter Voorhoeve, is similarly bullish about the sister brand’s prospects.
“The product has never been better. If you combine that with a more stable and stabilized supply chain, if you combine that with the extra capacity that we will get from both New River Valley and in Mexico, then I think that we have the elements to say that we are gearing for growth in North America with Volvo Trucks,” Voorhoeve said.
VTNA initiated operations of Plant 2 at the New River Valley manufacturing facility in Dublin its entirety for the first time June 21.
Some $400 million was spent by Volvo on a revamp of New River Valley — which sits next to the Volvo Trucks customer center where the Capital Markets Day was held — ahead of the VNL redesign.
That spending and the 25% market share target was part of a long-term plan, according to Volvo Group CEO Martin Lundstedt.
“Five, six years ago, we did see that we are getting our act together. We are getting our act together when it comes to serving the customer: customer satisfaction; we are getting our act together when it actually comes to different ranges; we’re getting our act together when it comes to our profitability with captive powertrains and services etc.,” said the parent company’s top executive.
“At that time, we said ‘now it is time to take the next step,’ because you cannot grow yourself out of other problems; you need to have the strong foundation that we have,” he said. “Then we took a bold decision, now we do a coordinated end-to-end effort. And that is what we see the result of.”
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A large part of the push will be via trucks using fuels that are not diesel, said Lundstedt. Volvo expects all the new trucks it sells to be zero-emission by 2040.
In June, VTNA provided a first glimpse of a VNL 440 Electric. The order book for the VNL Electric is expected to open shortly. Volvo’s Cespira hydrogen internal combustion engine joint venture with Westport Fuel Systems began operations in the third quarter.
But Lundstedt told analysts the path to zero-emission trucks will be bumpy, even while Volvo remains committed to its goals.
“The long-term trend is clear, our markets will transform … but what looks smooth and stable is not,” he said.
As a result, Volvo needed to be flexible enough to adapt to hurdles and accelerations, he said, noting that alternative fuel trucks were competing with an extremely efficient legacy diesel value chain.
Electric truck adoption requires the trucks, fossil-free energy, infrastructure, a supply network, customer peace of mind plus incentives and a price on carbon to succeed, he said.
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