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Swedish Startup Volta Unveils Electric Truck

Electric Volta Zero. VOLTA TRUCKS
Electric Volta Zero. VOLTA TRUCKS
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Swedish Startup Volta Unveils Electric Truck

Electric Volta Zero. VOLTA TRUCKS
Electric Volta Zero. VOLTA TRUCKS

Swedish startup Volta Trucks on Thursday unveiled its Volta Zero, a 16-ton electric truck, with plans to start production in 2022 in the United Kingdom.

Following the success of companies such as Tesla in popularizing electric cars, electric trucks have also been getting a lot of attention from existing players such as Volvo and Daimler and startups like Rivian and Nikola, Reuters reported.

Trials will start next year with parcel delivery companies such as DPDgroup in the UK and other firms in Europe and Volta aims to put 500 vehicles on the road by 2022, CEO Rob Fowler told Reuters.

"We are also well progressed with another seven or eight customers," he said.

The company said the first Volta vehicle was manufactured by Prodrive in Warwick, England, and it is in discussion with a small number of suppliers for contract manufacturing of its trucks.

It declined to give details about its current funding.

Fowler said that the company is interested in raising funds to fuel the capital-intensive business.

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Microsoft Halts China-based Tech Support for Pentagon Systems

FILE - The Microsoft company logo is displayed at their offices in Sydney, Australia, on Feb. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
FILE - The Microsoft company logo is displayed at their offices in Sydney, Australia, on Feb. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
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Microsoft Halts China-based Tech Support for Pentagon Systems

FILE - The Microsoft company logo is displayed at their offices in Sydney, Australia, on Feb. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
FILE - The Microsoft company logo is displayed at their offices in Sydney, Australia, on Feb. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)

Microsoft said Friday it is making sure that personnel based in China are not providing technical support for US Defense Department systems, after investigative news site ProPublica revealed the practice earlier this week.

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth confirmed that work on Defense Department cloud services had been outsourced to people in China, insisting that the country will not have "any involvement whatsoever" with the department's systems going forward.

"Microsoft has made changes to our support for US Government customers to assure that no China-based engineering teams are providing technical assistance for DoD Government cloud and related services," the company's chief communications officer, Frank Shaw, said in a post on X.

ProPublica reported Tuesday that the tech giant was using engineers based in China -- Washington's primary military rival -- to maintain Pentagon computer systems, with only limited supervision by US personnel who often lacked the necessary expertise to do the job effectively.

US Senator Tom Cotton asked Hegseth to look into the matter in a letter dated Thursday, and the Pentagon chief responded that he would do so.

Hegseth then posted a video on X Friday evening in which he said "it turns out that some tech companies have been using cheap Chinese labor to assist with DoD cloud services. This is obviously unacceptable, especially in today's digital threat environment."

"At my direction, the department will... initiate -- as fast as we can -- a two-week review, or faster, to make sure that what we uncovered isn't happening anywhere else across the DoD," AFP quoted him as saying.

"We will continue to monitor and counter all threats to our military infrastructure and online networks," he added, thanking "all those Americans out there in the media and elsewhere who raised this issue to our attention so we could address it."