Voltu delivers first all-electric, heavy duty pickup trucks to Riverside
The electric vehicle startup Voltu Motor Inc. marked the start of production and customer deliveries Tuesday of its first heavy-duty, all-electric pickup trucks at its cavernous headquarters in east Riverside.
Riverside Public Utilities bought 10 of the Voltu3 pickups from the privately held truck maker with the city ordering another 10 for its general services department.
Voltu, which has roots in Buenos Aires, said Riverside is the company’s first customer in the United States with the $2.7 million order. Riverside did not provide the investment cost for the trucks and related charging equipment.
In Argentina, the 11-year-old company has already sold 20 of the vehicles to Mexican-based Coca-Cola FEMSA, the largest franchise Coca Cola bottler in the world, Anheuser-Busch InBev, the largest brewer in the world, and an unidentified logistics company.
David Garcia, general manager of the Riverside Public Utilities, said his city-run electric and water utility could buy up to 80 of the EV pickups over the next three-to-five years.
The utility’s staff is looking to take advantage of California’s new $1 billion rebate program for electric trucks that offer rebates ranging from $7,500 to $120,000 for new electric medium- and heavy duty commercial vehicles, according to Garcia.
Each Voltu truck has a range of 350 miles, can tow 17,000 pounds with a payload of 4,400 pounds and sells for about $135,000, according to George Gebhart, company founder and chief executive officer. Gebhart also is a bioengineer and a former researcher in the field of artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomous vehicles.
The trucks are Class 3 vehicles, meaning they are standard workhorses across commercial and consumer sectors. At the utilities department in Riverside, Garcia plans to use the truck to haul tools, spools of piping and copper wire, or send out to repair telephone lines or substations.
“There is definitely going to be a savings in terms of fuel costs and maintenance, which we’ll be bringing to Voltu for the work as part of our maintenance agreement,” Garcia explained.
The 40,000-square foot factory employs about 20 workers who assemble the trucks, including their power units, transmission and battery packs.
The facility will employ roughly 50 workers by the end of this year as it ramps up assembly of the truck, and 220 by late 2027, according to Gebhart.
The company is dubbing its factory Voltu Forge One – Riverside and establishing its U.S. global headquarters along Eastridge Avenue.
Gebhart said that Voltu has a pipeline of $70 million in orders for over 700 trucks. He declined to identify the buyers but said they were in the fields of “airports, ports, cities and counties” in California.
“We have 100 to deploy by November,” Gebhart boasted.
Voltu is financially backed by “family and friends,” and VX Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of independent energy company Vista Energy of Buenos Aires.
Voltu joins a handful of other EV truck makers in Southern California that continue to push forward in a difficult market disrupted by anti-EV investment policies coming out of Washington, D.C. California has stepped into the space with its own rebate program after the federal government withdrew similar offers following President Donald Trump’s pushback on EVs after he took office in January 2025.
ZM Trucks opened its factory in August 2025 and partnered with the city of Fontana to support municipal operations. ZM’s medium-duty all-electric trucks are tailored for urban delivery, logistics and facilities maintenance.
New Jersey-based Cenntro opened a large plant in Ontario in 2024 to assemble drayage trucks for the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and cargo vans.
Garden Grove-based Harbinger Motors is focusing on the medium-sized EV cargo delivery truck market and has won at least half-a-billion in customer vehicle orders. The privately held Harbinger has received more than $358 million in investments from financial backers since its inception in 2021.
One regional EV truck maker has fallen on hard times, however.
Brea-based Mullen Automotive Inc. said last summer that it was shifting operations to Michigan and changing its name to Bollinger Innovations as the EV truck maker struggled to improve its finances and vehicle sales.
The company was delisted from the Nasdaq last fall, and eventually ceased all operations in late 2025, according to trade publication FreightWaves.
Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.
This story was originally published June 9, 2026 at 2:08 PM.