Volvo Penta exec to host roundtable at Power Progress Summit 2024

Darren Tasker, Volvo Penta (Photo: Volvo Penta)

As part of the upcoming Power Progress Summit in Chicago, the program will include a special roundtable discussion hosted by Darren Tasker, vice president of Industrial at Volvo Penta North America.

Joining Tasker up on stage will be: Mike Popovich, president of Gradall Industries; Todd McBride, RTX sales and marketing manager at Rosenbauer; and Mallery Pindar, senior director of sales and marketing at TICO.

While producing very different products (respectively a municipal vehicle, fire truck and airport terminal vehicle), each of these companies has worked with Volvo Penta to develop and implement electric drivetrains for their vehicles.

“The goal of the roundtable is to show that electric drivetrains are here now, and they can be designed and adapted for a variety of different applications,” said Tasker in a telephone call with Power Progress International.

“We’ll be talking about some of the challenges they had, from a technical standpoint and from an application perspective, while also looking at the customer view,” he added.

Rosenbauer fire truck featuring electric powertrain (Photo: Volvo Penta)

Asked about what the audience at the summit can expect as a takeaway from the roundtable, Tasker responded: “I’d like them to learn more about the process that these organizations went through to get these vehicles to market, the challenges they had to overcome to realise a saleable product.”

Ultimately, the case studies behind development of each vehicle type will highlight how flexible an electrified power solution can be across a variety of applications.

“I’d also like to talk about deployment of these vehicles,” said Tasker. “I think there’s a lot of concerns about charging, so we’ll look to cover how that was addressed. I’m hoping that we can answer some of the questions on the minds of the audience.”

The Power Progress Summit will be held in Chicago on 1-2 October (click for more info).

The event will also feature the Off-Highway Research conference.