Slagle Joins Commercial Vehicle Startup TrovaCV

Trova Commercial Vehicles may be a new name in the marketplace, but many in the electric vehicle start-up’s leadership team come from well-known truck brands.

In August, Patrick Collignon, former chief operating officer for Volvo Trucks North and South America, launched the company also known as TrovaCV.

More recently, the company announced that Denny Slagle, who retired as executive vice president of Volvo Group and president of Mack Trucks in 2018, will join the company’s newly formed advisory board as senior adviser. He will provide input and expertise on the company’s general management, distribution, business finance management and investor strategy.

TrovaCV was founded to offer customized engineering and manufacturing expertise for electric commercial vehicles.

“This is an exciting time as the electric commercial vehicle market is being reshaped,” said Collignon, founder and CEO. “While technology and innovation have made it possible to convert fuel-powered commercial vehicles into electric vehicles, we haven’t seen a production model capable of producing the required volume of fully electric commercial vehicles to meet the demand.”

The new firm will focus on the engineering, design and production of fully electric commercial vehicles with the goal of achieving mass production cost-effectively. The company said it will offer its industrial model and manufacturing capability to other commercial vehicle OEMs while developing its own fully electric vehicle.

“We believe that our engineering approach will offer OEMs the opportunity to build a higher volume of electric vehicles at a lower cost,” said Collignon. “At the same time, we will utilize our chassis design experience to achieve a complete EV build design from the ground up.”

Collignon has more than 30 years of experience in the commercial vehicle industry with General Motors and the Volvo Group. Before launching TrovaCV, he served as senior vice president of operations for the Americas for Volvo Trucks, where he led a strategic initiative to develop and manufacture the Mack medium-duty truck platform.

“Patrick is one of the most innovative thinkers I’ve ever worked with,” said Slagle. “I’m looking forward to supporting him in this venture to design, build and industrialize a commercial vehicle chassis specifically made to be powered by electricity. Our backgrounds and industry expertise complement each other well, and I think that will help TrovaCV achieve success.”

TrovaCV is located in a business incubation center in Fairlawn, Va.