Volvo truck division wants Australia to fund wider roads or change the rules – experts say ‘not so fast’

Volvo Trucks Australia has renewed its calls to change legislation that would allow super-wide electric trucks to be driven on local roads.

But road safety experts have warned against such a change to the regulations without making the roads wider – which would come at considerable cost to the taxpayer.

Volvo and a number of rival truck distributors are campaigning the Federal Government to increase the maximum permitted width regulations to match European laws, which would allow the company to sell – and locally assemble – its new ‘FH’ electric truck in Australia.

While European road rules allow electric trucks to operate with a maximum width of 2.55 metres, the width limit for all prime movers in Australia is 2.5 metres (excluding mirrors) – about 2.5cm narrower than the electric Volvo FH big rig.

However, road safety expert and director of advanced driver-training company Driving Solutions, James Stewart, says the focus should be on improving Australia’s road network, rather than change the current regulations without making infrastructure upgrades.

“It’s smart to get electric vehicles on the roads, but the road system has to be upgraded accordingly – sooner or later, Australia needs to go to a standardised road width,” Mr Stewart told Drive.

“The biggest issue is the size of the road. When you’re talking motorways, you can get away with it (the proposed regulation changes) fairly easily, but when you start looking at most of the rural roads in Australia, they’re not built for that size.

“So unless they end up putting in rules such as B-doubles (multi-trailer big-rigs) which can’t do all roads, I think that’s where they’re going to fall into trouble. If it was just a blanket rule that trucks of that size can go everywhere, I would be cautiously against it.”

Volvo Trucks Australia assembles approximately 3000 Volvo, Mack and UD trucks annually at its Wacol facility in Queensland – located approximately 20 minutes east of Brisbane – for sale to fleet companies in Australia and New Zealand.

While Volvo Truck Australia has started to take orders for the Volvo FM Electric and FH Electric trucks – which it plans to build in Wacol from 2027 – Australian road regulations currently prevent the battery-powered big rigs from being driven on local roads without a special permit.

Volvo Truck Australia boss, Martin Merrick, said “each state and their road engineers need to come together” to discuss a national policy on road width requirements for heavy vehicles.

“We’re working with the Queensland Government at the moment, doing a test with the heavy-duty electric trucks to give data back in the hope that it will accelerate (the legislation change). We’re also working with Victoria and VicRoads.

“We’re doing our best to provide data and work on pilots to accelerate the process, but we don’t have any idea on timing yet.”

The consultation phase for the proposed legislation changes has previously forced Volvo Trucks Australia to delay its production plans for its large electric prime movers, after initially proposing a start date of 2025.

Volvo Trucks Australia recently celebrated the delivery of its 75,000th truck built at Wacol near Brisbane since opening the facility in 1972.

Globally, Volvo Trucks is targeting 50 per cent of its sales to come from electric and hydrogen fuel-cell powered heavy vehicles by 2030, while it aims for its fleet of new trucks to produce no tailpipe emissions by 2040.

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