Einride begins fully-autonomous, commercial EV truck operations with GE Appliances
Autonomous EV freight developer Einride announced another key milestone today, deploying full-time, commercial operations with longtime partner, GE Appliances. The autonomous trucks are navigating between GE’s manufacturing facility and warehouse, demonstrating a case for scaled commercialization in the electric freight industry.
Today’s milestone is another notable achievement for a relatively young company like Einride, which was founded in Sweden less than eight years ago. In that time, we’ve followed much of the autonomous truck company’s progress, including partnerships with companies like Maersk and Beyond Meat, as well as expansions into new markets like Germany.
After announcing plans to set up a new headquarters in the US, we’ve seen Einride make huge strides in all-electric autonomous freight mobility the past two years. In June of 2022, the company received approval from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to begin piloting its Pod trucks – marking the first time a purpose-built autonomous, electric truck without a driver on board has received permission to operate on public US roads.
At the time, we reported that Einride’s client, GE Appliances would serve as the key partner in the initial US pilot program to both test and showcase the commercialization capabilities of the autonomous, electric Pod trucks.
18 months later, Einride has shared a progress update with GE in which the former has begun full-time autonomous truck operations between two of the latter’s facilities in Tennessee.
Einride’s autonomous trucks run daily for GE Appliances
Following a successful public road pilot program with GE Appliances last year, Einride reports that its zero-emission autonomous trucks are now operating in Selmer, Tennessee, Monday through Thursday – completing up to seven shuttles of finished goods per day.
The trucks autonomously navigate 0.3 miles between GE Appliances’ manufacturing facility and warehouse while being monitored by one of Einride’s Remote Pod Operators, who can take control of the EVs if needed. In this case, Einride’s first remote operator, Tiffany Heathcott is monitoring the trucks on-site, rather than from her usual hub in Texas.
A relatively short route to begin, yes, but still a milestone for autonomous freight, as Einride’s Trucks are successfully navigating public roads around the clock with no humans present. Henrik Green, Einride’s general manager of autonomous technologies, spoke:
We are very proud to partner with GE Appliances and be able to lead the industry in providing autonomous technology and deploying it in the strongest commercial use case today. We look forward to continuing this work to establish autonomous’ key role in transportation, both with GE Appliances and other partners across markets.
Einride states that its autonomous truck operation is part of a larger project in Selmer with GE, which also includes other industry partners with the goal of creating a freight logistics flow that is entirely automated.
For instance, GE Appliances has also partnered with TaskWatch, whose AI cameras trigger a control board that raises and lowers GE’s dock doors and dock plate, then locks the Einride truck into place. The system then notifies a robot that the autonomous truck is ready to load. The robots come from another GE partner – Slip Robotics – whose technology can autonomously load and unload the vehicles, reducing times by 80%.
Together, Einride and GE Appliances hope to demonstrate the potential of a streamlined holistic logistics system that extends well beyond autonomous, zero emissions trucks and into every single aspect of the process – from factory to delivery. Per Harry Chase, senior director of central materials at GE Appliances:
Our partnership with Einride in Selmer reflects our evolved approach to robotics and automation technology. We are moving from implementing one-off solutions addressing various challenges to creating interoperability among systems that can build consistency and streamline processes in our factories and throughout our supply chain. This implementation in Selmer is helping us reduce emissions, allowing our employees to focus on high value tasks, reducing traffic in congested areas to create a safer work environment, and eliminating some of the most challenging ergonomic tasks like climbing on and off a forklift and hooking and unhooking trailers. We believe robotics and automation technology should work with and for people to improve their jobs.
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GreenPower Motor Company says it’s received three orders for 11 of its BEAST electric Type D school buses for western state school districts in Arizona, California, and Oregon.
GreenPower hasn’t made the sort of headline-grabbing promises or big-money commitments that companies like Nikola and Lion Electric have, but while those companies are floundering GPM seems to be plugging away, taking orders where it can and actually delivering buses to schools. Late last year, the company scored 11 more orders for its flagship BEAST electric school bus.
As far as these latest orders go, the breakdown is:
- seven to Los Banos Unified School District in Los Banos, California
- two for the Hood River County School District in Hood River, Oregon
- two for the Casa Grande Elementary School District in Casa Grande, Arizona
Those two BEAST electric school buses for Arizona will join another 90-passenger BEAST that was delivered to Phoenix Elementary School District #1, which operates 15 schools in the center of Phoenix, late last year.
“As school districts continue to make the change from NOx emitting diesel school buses to a cleaner, healthier means of transporting students, school district transportation departments are pursuing the gold standard of the industry – the GreenPower all-electric, purpose-built (BEAST) school buses,” said Paul Start, GreenPower’s Vice President of Sales, School Bus Group. “(The) GreenPower school bus order pipeline and production schedule are both at record levels with sales projections for (2025) set to eclipse the 2024 calendar year.”
GreenPower moved into an 80,000-square-foot production facility in South Charleston, West Virigina in August 2022, and delivered its first buses to that state the following year.
Electrek’s Take
Since the first horseless carriage companies started operating 100 years ago (give or take), at least 1,900 different companies have been formed in the US, producing over 3,000 brands of American automobiles. By the mid 1980s, that had distilled down to “the big 3.”
All of which is to say: don’t let the recent round of bankruptcies fool you – startups in the car and truck industry is business as usual, but some of these companies will stick around. If you’re wondering which ones, look to the ones that are making units, not promises.
SOURCE | IMAGES: GreenPower Motors.
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While some recent high-profile bankruptcies have cast doubt on the EV startup space recently, medium-duty electric truck maker Harbinger got a shot of credibility this week with a massive $100 million Series B funding round co-led by Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund.
It’s been a rough couple of weeks for fledgling EV brands like Lion Electric and Canoo, but box van builder Harbinger is bucking the trend, fueling its latest funding round with an order book of 4,690 vehicles that’s valued at nearly $500 million. Some of the company’s more notable customers including Bimbo Bakeries (which owns brands like Sara Lee, Thomas’, and Entenmann’s) and THOR Industries (Airstream, Jayco, Thor), which is also one of the investors in the Series B.
Other prominent investors include Tiger Global, the Coca-Cola System Sustainability Fund, and ArcTern Ventures.
As for what makes Harbinger such an attractive investment prospect, Dipender Saluja, Managing Partner of Capricorn Investment Group’s Technology Impact Fund explains that, “Harbinger has demonstrated a remarkable ability to reach significant milestones far quicker than other EV companies … the market has been impressed by their ability to develop large portions of the vehicle in-house to drive down unit costs, while remaining capital efficient.”
The company plans to use the funds to ramp up to higher-volume production capacity and deliver on existing orders, as well as build-out of the company’s sales, customer support, and service operations.
“Harbinger is entering a rapid growth phase where we are focused on scaling production of our customer-ready platform,” said John Harris, co-founder and CEO. “These funds catalyze significant revenue generation. We’ve developed a vehicle for a segment that is ripe for electrification, and there is a strong product/market fit that will help fuel our upward trajectory through 2025 and beyond.”
The company has raised $200 million since its inception in 2021.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Harbinger.
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There is no state more associated with cars and car culture than Michigan – and the state that’s home to the Motor City has just taken a huge step into the future with the deployment of its first-ever all electric police vehicle.
The 2024 Ford Mustang Mach-E patrol vehicle is assigned to the Michigan State Police State Security Operations Section, and will be to be used by armed, uniformed members of the MSP specializing in general law enforcement and security services at state-owned facilities in the Lansing, MI area.
“This is an exciting opportunity for us to research, in real time, how a battery electric vehicle performs on patrol,” says Col. James F. Grady II, director of the MSP. “Our state properties security officers patrol a substantially smaller number of miles per day than our troopers and motor carrier officers, within city limits and at lower speeds, coupled with the availability of charging infrastructure in downtown Lansing, making this the ideal environment to test the capabilities of a police-package battery electric vehicle.”
The MSP’s Precision Driving Unit is nationally renowned for its annual Police Vehicle Evaluation, which our own Scooter Doll participated in last year, driving the then-new Chevy Blazer EV Police Pursuit Vehicles in a game of “cops and robbers.”
In those tests, the EVs have impressed – but the MSP has been hesitant to commit to a BEV until now. “We began testing battery electric vehicles in 2022, but up until now hybrids were the only alternative fuel vehicle in our fleet,” said Lt. Nicholas Darlington, commander of the Precision Driving Unit. “Adding this battery electric vehicle to our patrol fleet will allow us to study the vehicle’s performance long-term to determine if there is a potential for cost savings and broader applicability within our fleet.”
Michigan joins other states like Wisconsin and California in deploying electric patrol cars and saving big money on fuel and maintenance, with many more out there and many more to come.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Michigan State Police.
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