Driverless, cab-less truck builder Einride raises $110M to expand in the US and Europe
Story by: at FreigtWaves
Scaling is a priority but not thinking about going public — yet
Sweden-based Einride, whose driverless and cab-less freight pods (trucks) run on electricity, has raised $110 million in a Series B funding round.
First-time investors include Soros Fund Management LLC; Singapore’s Temasek Holdings Ltd.; Maersk Growth, the corporate venture arm of A.P. Moller – Maersk; and U.K. early-stage venture capital fund Northzone.
Existing investors EQT Ventures, Plum Alley, Norrsken VC, Ericsson and NordicNinja VC also participated in the round.
“With our global reach and expertise, we want to act as a catalyst for the next generation of logistics power players, as an investor and as a partner,” Jeppe Høier, partner at Maersk Growth, said in a press release. “We look forward to being part of Einride’s mission to electrify and decarbonize inland transport globally.”
European and US expansion
Einride will use the money to scale deployments in Europe and expand to the U.S., where CEO Robert Falck said operations will be up and running before the end of the year. A U.S. headquarters is planned for Austin, Texas.
“We’re also expanding into the Nordics and Benelux (economic union of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg) in the first half of 2021 with the largest European markets — U.K., Germany, and France — coming in the second half,” he said.
Einride’s existing customers include Coca-Cola, Oatly, Lidl, and Electrolux in Sweden, where it operates a dozen of the only driverless freight mobility vehicles in commercial use. The new money could help expand that 10-fold in the next year, Falck said.
Volvo Trucks in 2019 began testing a teleoperated cabless freight hauler called Vera. It moved containers from a logistics center to a port terminal in Gothenburg, Sweden. Falck once worked in a Volvo factory. But there is no connection between Vera and Einride’s pods.
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Source and credits: freightwaves.com
iTrucker / Mario Pawlowski / iTrucker.com
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