HANDLE WITH CARE

Matt Saunders has driven all manner of vehicles in all manner of locations as road test editor but never before a 20-tonne electric-powered HGV on ice. Are both man and machine up to the job?

- Matt Saunders

The road towards electrification might prove to be a dead end for some vehicle manufacturers, yet Swedish truck-making institution Scania hasn't been afraid to set out on it, just to see where it may lead.

The firm still typically fits six and eight-cylinder turbodiesel combustion engines to its wares, of anywhere between seven and 16 litres of swept capacity. Capable of nearly 800bhp and close to 3000lb ft of torque, its V8s remain objects of fervent desire among trucking enthusiasts (and where Scania is concerned especially, you'd better believe those enthusiasts exist).

But if you want to run your Scania on recycled vegetable oil instead of diesel, you can. In offering vehicles powered by either liquefied or compressed natural gas, the firm has been providing routes to lower-carbon trucking for years already and it has plug-in hybrid options and prototype hydrogen fuel cell trucks already running, too.