Tembo Launches KOVA Electric Pickup for Fleet Buyers

VivoPower's electric vehicle subsidiary, Tembo e-LV B.V., launched a new truck on November 13, 2026. The Tembo KOVA is an all-electric four-wheel-drive pickup built for fleet customers, announced from London and Eindhoven by VivoPower PLC (Nasdaq: VIVO), a B Corp-certified developer of powered land and data center infrastructure. KOVA stands for Kinetic Off-road Vehicle Architecture, and the name describes the brief: demanding off-road terrain and rugged on-road fleet duty.

The hardware is a five-seat dual cab with a motor on each axle. The battery is an 88 kWh lithium iron phosphate unit from CATL, and the dual-motor drivetrain delivers a combined peak output of 200 kW and 485 Nm, per the launch release. Manufacturer-stated range runs up to 510 km on the CLTC laboratory cycle and 460 km on the WLTP cycle. Those are laboratory figures, not road results, and CLTC and WLTP numbers aren't directly comparable with each other or with a loaded work truck's real day.

The working numbers matter more to the buyers Tembo names. The release lists a maximum payload of 1,200 kg and braked towing capacity of up to 3,000 kg. The named sectors are mining, agriculture, energy, construction, infrastructure, government and safari tourism — fleets that run vehicles hard, park them in depots and care about fuel and maintenance line items more than launch styling.

The KOVA will be offered in four markets: Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Nepal. Tembo estimates that roughly 223,000 new four-wheel-drive pickup trucks will be sold in 2026 across those four markets combined. That's the pool the KOVA is fishing in, and it's a pool where diesel still does nearly all of the work today.

The KOVA doesn't replace Tembo's existing lines. It sits alongside the Tembo Tusker, a 100 percent electric model, and the Tembo EUV E-Power conversion line, which electrifies existing vehicles. Fleet customers now get a choice the release states plainly: buy a new electric vehicle, or electrify one they already own.

The size of the opening is worth stating plainly. One analysis of the four launch markets, reported alongside the launch, put expected electric pickup sales at only about 1,200 units in 2026, against the roughly 223,000 total four-wheel-drive pickups Tembo expects to be sold across the same markets. The KOVA is therefore not entering a mature electric segment. It's entering a diesel segment at the very start of its electric turn, which is exactly where a fleet-first truck with depot charging makes its strongest case.

What the launch doesn't yet have is a price or a delivery date. Commercial availability, pricing and ordering remain subject to homologation and regulatory approvals in each market, so the KOVA's real test starts when a mine or a farm fleet can sign for one and put it to work. The specification sheet says the truck is ready to be judged. The approvals will decide when the judging starts.