UK electric lorry start-up Tevva raises $57m in funding

British electric lorry start-up Tevva said on Tuesday it raised $57 million in its latest funding round to increase production at its new London plant and deliver its first vehicles to customers by the end of 2022. Tevva has now raised more than $90m as it seeks a leading space in the electric vehicle revolution led by Tesla.

The lorry maker will have two zero-emission, 7.5 tonne models available for customers. They will be a battery model with a range of 260 kilometres and an electric lorry with a small reserve hydrogen fuel cell to boost its range to 500km if needed.

The back-up cell would provide customers with greater flexibility, Tevva chief executive Asher Bennett told Reuters. As hydrogen fuel infrastructure is still in its infancy, Tevva can provide the fuel as a service to customers.

Mr Bennett expects most companies to choose the reserve cell because they are wary of the limited range of a pure electric model.

"We understand how the truck world operates and the huge risk of that range limit is too difficult for a lot of companies to overcome," he said. Lorry fleet owners are looking for viable zero-emission options to deliver goods to businesses and consumers. UPS, the world's largest package delivery company, is using 15 test model lorries from Tevva.

Tevva intends to produce several hundred vehicles by the end of 2022 and increase production to 3,000 lorries a year by 2023. Mr Bennett said the company planned small factories to make lorries close to customers.

He said that once Tevva's London plant was operating at scale, the company would look at more sites in North America and the EU.