Heavy trucks are a tiny slice of the vehicles on India’s roads, yet they punch far above their weight in smoke, noise and carbon. A Bengaluru startup called Tresa Motors is building a different answer: a ground-up electric truck for the 18- to 55-tonne segment, with its own motor, its own battery and a steering wheel in the middle of the cab — and some of India’s biggest fleet operators are already watching closely.
Tresa Motors was founded in 2022 by Rohan Shravan, a mechanical engineer from IIT Kharagpur who is the company’s founder, chief executive and chief technology officer, and Ravi Machani, a co-founder and investor. The board is chaired by Vinod K. Dasari, the former managing director and chief executive of Ashok Leyland and former chief executive of Royal Enfield — a hire that says plenty about how seriously the startup takes the business of building trucks, not just prototypes. The company has said it plans to invest &rupee;500–1,000 crore in manufacturing and research facilities, and has been evaluating sites in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
The truck
The first truck, the Model V0.1, was unveiled in July 2023, and the V0.2 followed in April 2024. The V0.2 is built for the 18- to 55-tonne gross vehicle weight segment, the workhorse class that hauls India’s freight — and it looks like nothing else on the road. The steering wheel sits in the centre of the cab, giving the driver an equal view to both sides and making the same truck work for left- and right-hand-drive markets. The cab is designed around the driver first, with an air-suspended seat and a panoramic windscreen, because the company says a calmer, more comfortable driver is a safer one.
The numbers are striking. The company says the V0.2’s motors produce 24,000 Nm of torque at the wheels, with a top speed of 120 kmph. A 300 kWh battery pack delivers a range of around 300 kilometres on a full charge, and the company says it can charge from 10% to 80% in 20 minutes — a quick turnaround that matters when a truck earns money only when it is moving. The modular battery packs can be stacked for longer routes, and the truck carries the company’s first heat pump, handling all cooling including the cabin air-conditioning. “We are excited to announce the launch of Model V0.2. Built on our ‘Delta-Engineering’ philosophy, V0.2 is a major internal release where we get to test and monitor all of our components on the road,” Shravan said at the unveiling.
A motor built in-house
The heart of the truck is the Flux 350, an axial flux motor platform the company designed and built itself. Axial flux motors are shorter, flatter and denser than the conventional radial motors found in most electric vehicles, packing more torque into a smaller, lighter package — exactly what a heavy truck needs. The liquid-cooled Flux 350 runs on a high-voltage platform in outputs from 150 kW to 350 kW, and slots straight into the e-axle Tresa is developing, replacing the engine, gearbox and heavy mounting hardware of a diesel truck. The company says it is the sole manufacturer of an axial-flux-powered eAxle in India.
A battery that bathes in coolant
The second piece of in-house engineering is the Meg50, an 800-volt, 50 kWh battery module that is fully immersion-cooled — the cells sit bathed in coolant, keeping temperatures even under the heavy loads of a fully laden truck climbing a ghat in summer. The modules stack into a 600 kWh modular pack, with an in-house battery management system, and the company says the immersion cooling is what makes the 20-minute fast charge possible without punishing the battery. It is a ground-up design for Indian conditions, not an imported pack bolted into a local chassis.
More Read
A computer on wheels
Under the angular bodywork, the V0.2 is as much a computer as a truck. An NVIDIA GPU-driven centralised computing unit runs the vehicle’s control, AI and telematics, while an advanced telemetry system streams data from more than 500 monitoring points to the cloud for constant performance, safety and efficiency analysis. The company’s Performant AI system adds LiDAR-enabled driver assistance, which the company says is proven on the road — an extra set of eyes for a driver hauling 55 tonnes through Indian traffic.
On the road
Tresa’s trucks have already earned their trade certificates and licence plates, and the company is putting them through a million kilometres of on-road trials across different terrains and weather conditions — the benchmark it has set for itself before the production-ready truck rolls out of the factory. The order book is already open: logistics company JFK Transporters has pre-ordered 1,000 of the trucks, and the company has said pricing will start at around &rupee;35 lakh. The first commercial truck will be the 18-tonne model, with the 55-tonne variant to follow. Alongside the trucks, Tresa also offers Tresa Retrofit, which the company says electrifies existing diesel fleets at 40% cheaper than buying new.
From a two-founder Bengaluru startup to a truck with its own motor, its own battery and a steering wheel in the middle, Tresa Motors has done the hard part of Indian deep tech: it designed the whole machine itself, proved it on the road, and lined up the customers to buy it. India’s freight runs on diesel today. Tresa is building the truck to change that — one fleet at a time.
Keep reading: Pune Builds the Future: Inside Mercedes-Benz’s Electric GLC, Made in India · Built in India, Priced at $5,999: Inside Harley-Davidson’s Sprint 440, the New Cheapest Harley · More Automotive & Mobility stories
Like stories like this? Add Exceptional Technology as a preferred source on Google to see more of our reporting in your search results and Discover feed.
