Tag: electric truck

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Mullen acquires controlling interest in EV startup Bollinger Motors

Mullen Automotive has acquired a controlling interest in Bollinger Motors, a move intended to strengthen the two EV companies’ positions within the fast-growing electric sport utility and commercial vehicle markets.

The $148.2 million acquisition announced Thursday gives Mullen a 60% controlling interest in Bollinger, as well as an opportunity to expand into the “high-demand commercial EV space,” David Michery, CEO and chairman of Mullen Automotive, said in a statement.

Bollinger Motors, a Michigan-based startup, launched in 2015 to make all-electric commercial vehicles for classes 3 through 6. The company planned to produce the Bollinger B1 and B2 off-road electric pickup trucks, but postponed development earlier this year.

Mullen, which went public last year in a merger with Net Element, has not yet launched a car. It plans to launch its first electric crossover, the Mullen FIVE, in 2024.

The investment will help fast-track the development of Bollinger’s class commercial electric trucks, including a Class 4 vehicle expected next year, and resume its consumer truck program, according to the startup.

Mullen and Bollinger will continue to grow the team and develop all-electric commercial platforms, leveraging each other’s resources, including Mullen’s solid-state battery technology. Robert Bollinger will remain as CEO.

“Combining Bollinger’s vehicles with our existing class 1 and class 2 EV cargo van programs gives us the chance to dominate the entire class 1-6 commercial light and medium duty truck segments,” Michery said.

Mullen acquires controlling interest in EV startup Bollinger Motors by Jaclyn Trop originally published on TechCrunch

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3 things to watch for on Rivian’s Q2 earnings day

Rivian, the EV startup that went public last year in one of the largest IPOs in U.S. history, has bucked the trend set by Tesla and other EV makers during the first half of the year.

Tesla, the world’s largest EV maker, reported two consecutive quarters of delivery declines stemming from delays in the supply chain and COVID-related lockdowns in Shanghai that stymied production its Gigafactory there.

Lucid has cut its 2022 production forecast several times this year, now targeting 6,000 to 7,000 vehicles, down from its original plan to build 20,000. U.K.-based Arrival said Thursday that it is slashing its 2022 target from 400 to 600 vehicles down to just 20.

Meanwhile, Rivian, which set a goal to own more than 10% of the global market eventually, said it has ramped up production so far this year – a mix of the Rivian R1T pickup truck, R1S SUV and the EDV commercial electric vans it is making for Amazon – and reaffirmed its target to deliver 25,000 vehicles this year.

However, the Irvine, California-based manufacturer faces the same financial pressures affecting the automotive industry. In July, it began laying off 900 employees – about 6% of its workforce – as part of a restructuring plan.

We’ll be tuning into Rivian’s second-quarter financial results after the market closes Thursday to see how it plans to navigate the industry’s headwinds, including ongoing supply chain issues and production hurdles.

What analysts and TechCrunch will be watching out for 

Per data from Yahoo Finance, analysts expect that Rivian generated Q2 2022 revenue of $337.52 million, more than triple the $95 million it reported for the first quarter of the year. Rivian did not begin generating revenue until Q3 2021.

Restructuring

We’ll be tuning in for news on Rivian’s layoffs, which are hitting every department, with one important exception — manufacturing operations at its Normal, Illinois factory.

“We need to be able to continue to grow and scale without additional financing in this macro environment,” CEO RJ Scaringe wrote in an internal email. “To achieve this, we have simplified our product roadmap and focused on where it is most impactful to deploy capital.”

Rivian begins laying off 6% of workforce

The automaker may provide updates on its quarterly call with analysts Thursday and outline the details of its overall plan to cut costs.

Amazon

Amazon, Rivian’s largest customer, began in July delivering packages using its EDV commercial electric vans.

The initial rollout includes routes in Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Nashville, Phoenix, San Diego, Seattle and St. Louis, and will cover more than 100 cities by the end of the year, according to Amazon. The company is targeting more than 100,000 EV delivery vans on the road by 2030.

We’ll be listening Thursday for any guidance on Rivian’s plans to deliver more vans to Amazon, which owns an 18% stake in the company, as well as any initial findings Rivian has gleaned so far on the van’s performance, safety and durability in different climates and geographies.

Production

We’ll also be looking for an update on Rivian’s new factory near Atlanta, which received Georgia’s largest-ever $1.5 billion incentives package. Its second factory is expected to break ground this summer and begin production in 2024.

Until then, the automaker plans to develop its future R2 platform, as well as enhance the R1 platform that underpins its electric truck and SUV.

Rivian has said that its new lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery pack will launch in its commercial vehicles for Amazon later this year and serve as the standard architecture for R1T pickups and R1S SUVs starting in late 2023.

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Arrival slashes production targets to just 20 EV vans as part of restructuring

Arrival, the U.K.-based commercial EV startup turned publicly traded company, has lowered its delivery plans from 400 vehicles to 20 as it postpones development of its battery-electric buses and shifts gears to focus on vans.

The company, which reported Thursday widening losses for the second quarter, said it no longer expects to generate revenue in 2022.

“We are switching from the mode where we have two products, two shifts and two micro factories to the mode where it’s one factory, one shift, one product,” CEO Denis Sverdlov said during a call with analysts. “We believe that this opportunity to switch gives us better chances to be successful.”

Sverdlov’s comments confirm a Financial Times report last week citing unnamed sources that the company was shelving its electric bus and an electric vehicle designed in partnership with Uber. plans to focus on the van. Arrival revealed in May 2022 at a TechCrunch event the first prototype of its purpose-built electric vehicle for ride-hailing.

For the second-quarter, Arrival reported a loss of $89.6 million, compared with a loss of $56.2 million in the second quarter of 2021. The adjusted EBITDA loss for the period was $76.2 million, compared with a $41.2 million loss during the same period last year.

The company has faced several delays since going public in March 2021 through a $660 million SPAC deal with CIIG Merger. Production delays triggered a class-action lawsuit against the company, which now plans to open its Charlotte, North Carolina, factory next year.   

Arrival had initially expected to deliver between 400 and 600 vehicles in 2022.

“Originally we wanted to make many shifts to push the volumes for the end of the year,” Svedlov said. “We decided that strategically it’s better for us to spend cash, be much more careful and focus on delivering first vehicles in perfect condition to our customers, and then scale from that point.”

Last month, Arrival signaled plans to slash costs and cut as much as 30% of its workforce in an effort to protect the business from a challenging economic environment while meeting its production targets. The plan was designed to allow the company to meet its targets through late 2023 using the $500 million of cash it has on hard, the company said at the time.

Arrival ended the second quarter with about $513 million of cash and cash equivalents and said it began restructuring the business to reduce costs. The company also is aiming to raise money through a $300 million at-the-market offering.

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Einride to operate its cab-less autonomous pods on U.S. public roads

Einride, the Swedish startup that wants to electrify the autonomous freight industry, will begin operating its purpose-built, self-driving pods on public roads in the U.S. this year as part of an existing partnership with General Electric Appliances (GEA).

Einride’s pods are built without a front cabin for a human safety operator, which the company says required approval from the National Highway Traffic Safety Association (NHTSA) in order to operate on public roads.

“Other companies are retrofitting existing trucks to become autonomous, but we are doing the opposite,” Robert Falck, CEO and founder at Einride, told TechCrunch. “We are building a brand new way to do autonomous shipping from the ground up which results in this new type of vehicle design and functionality.”

While there are a number of autonomous trucking companies running freight in the U.S. today, it’s true that all of them are currently based on existing trucks, and almost none of them are electric.

Einride says this milestone marks the first time a purpose-built autonomous electric truck has received permission to operate on public roads, however, it is reminiscent of autonomous vehicle company Nuro’s 2020 request for a temporary exemption from certain low-speed vehicle standard requirements. Nuro’s vehicles, which deliver food and groceries using public roads, are also built without space for a driver or passengers. The company therefore needed NHTSA approval to use a new type of vehicle that isn’t built with certain human-centered features, like mirrors or a windshield. Presumably, Einride’s approval is similar in nature, but the company would not confirm with TechCrunch. NHTSA also was unable to confirm this to TechCrunch, despite multiple attempts to reach out.

Einride did say that the approval is conditional upon the company adhering to a set location and timing – Einride’s pod will be operating on a mixed traffic, mile-long stretch of road between a GEA factory and a warehouse in Selmer, Tennessee beginning in the third quarter of 2022. Einride has been piloting its pods with GEA since November 2021 at the company’s fenced warehouse in Louisville, during which time Einride tested the metal of its technology in a closed facility with predetermined routes and a controlled environment.

“This new pilot will take us out onto public roads for the first time in the U.S., allowing short shipments on routes that utilize public roads as well as fenced areas,” said Falck, noting that the pod will operate between a fenced warehouse and public roads. “What we’re building with these various pilots is a clear business case of how our Einride Pods can support commercialization for customers, in a variety of environments.”

During the initial two-week pilot, the pod will carry cargo and coordinate with teams at the warehouses for loading and unloading. A remote pod operator, which Einride says is a key to helping the company’s business model become scalable in the future, will monitor operations and assist or guide when needed during critical, low-speed operations, according to the company. For example, the remote operator might assist the vehicle in backing up to a dock or waiting for workers to unload the pod. Einride says the vehicle can operate autonomously in most other situations.

It’s not clear how many runs the pod will do each day, but per the limits of its approval with NHTSA, Einride’s pod will only operate during daylight hours on weekdays, and it will avoid adverse weather and road conditions like heavy rain, snow, fog, hail or temperatures below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. The pod has the ability, however, to operate in such conditions due to lidar and cameras, the company said.

Einride is also growing its footprint in the U.S. through its partnership with oat-based milk company Oatly. The two expanded their partnership earlier this month to electrify Oatly’s North American fleet with five of Einride’s connected electric Class 8 trucks. In February, Einride reportedly ordered 200 electric trucks from BYD to be used in the U.S.

Einride founder Robert Falck on his moral obligation to electrify autonomous trucking

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Foxconn to build Fisker PEAR EV at former Lordstown Motors plant in Ohio

Fisker Inc. and Foxconn said Thursday they will partner to build Fisker’s second all-electric model, the PEAR Urban Lifestyle EV, in Ohio now that Foxconn has purchased the former Lordstown Motors plant.

Production of the PEAR, an acronym for “Personal Electric Automotive Revolution,” is slated to begin in 2024, eventually ramping up to 250,000 units annually.

The announcement came hours after battery-electric truck company Lordstown completed a crucial $230 million deal to sell Foxconn the former GM Assembly Plant.

The agreement, signed days before a Saturday deadline, will allow Lordstown to remain in business and provide it with the money to build its first model, the all-electric Endurance pickup truck, there. Lordstown reported Monday a $90 million loss for Q1 2022.

Per the agreement, “Foxconn will use commercially reasonable efforts to assist with reducing component and logistics costs, and otherwise improving the commercial terms of procurement with suppliers, and the parties will work together to reduce the overall bill of materials cost of the Endurance,” Lordstown said in a filing Thursday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Foxconn, a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, will also use the 6.2 million-square-foot facility to build the sub-$30,000, five-passenger PEAR crossover, the second model from EV maker Fisker.

“The PEAR will be a revolutionary electric vehicle that won’t fit into any existing segment,” Fisker Chairman and CEO Henrik Fisker said in a statement. “The exterior design will feature new lighting technology and a wraparound front windscreen inspired by a glider plane glass canopy, enhancing frontal vision.”

Fisker said its first-ever EV, the $37,499 Ocean SUV, is on track to begin production in Europe in November.

Meanwhile, Lordstown remains under investigation by both the SEC and the U.S. Department of Justice for allegedly misleading investors by inflating its production capacity and falsifying its book of pre-orders. The company went public in October 2020 through a $1.6 billion SPAC merger with DiamondPeak Holdings but has yet to produce a vehicle.

The company said it hopes by July to build a limited number of pre-production vehicles for testing, certification, validation, and regulatory approvals, and to demonstrate the capabilities of the Endurance to potential customers.

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Lordstown reports $90 million loss and no progress on Foxconn deal

Lordstown Motors, the long-suffering battery-electric truck maker, said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday that it has not yet closed a $230 million deal with Foxconn ahead of a May 14 deadline that would allow it to remain a going concern.

Under the terms of the agreement, Taiwanese tech supplier Foxconn will buy for $230 million the former GM Assembly plant where Lordstown plans to produce its first vehicle, the all-electric Endurance pickup truck, and reimburse Lordstown for operating and expansion costs incurred since September 1.

Lordstown said in the filing that its ability to continue as a company and achieve production targets for the Endurance depends upon the deal with Foxconn.

If the deal is not completed by May 14 and Foxconn doesn’t grant an extension, Lordstown will need to pay back the $200 million it has received in down payments from the company since November, including $50 million in the quarter just ended.

Despite the challenges, the company said it hopes by July to build a limited number of pre-production vehicles for testing, certification, validation, and regulatory approvals, and to demonstrate the capabilities of the Endurance to potential customers.

According to the terms of the deal, Lordstown will continue to own its hub motor assembly line, as well as its battery module and pack line assets, certain intellectual property rights and other excluded assets.

“We will outsource all of the manufacturing of the Endurance to Foxconn with the sale of our Lordstown facility,” Lordstown wrote in the SEC filing. “Foxconn will also operate the assets we continue to own in the facility after closing.”

The electric truck maker, which went public in October 2020 through a $1.6 billion SPAC merger with DiamondPeak Holdings, has yet to produce a vehicle. The company reported a loss of $90 million for the three months ended on March 31 and was trading at $1.91 per share on Monday morning.

Meanwhile, the company is under investigation by both the SEC and the U.S. Department of Justice for allegedly misleading investors by inflating its production capabilities and the demand it sees. Six months after Lordstown’s debut on the NASDAQ, Hindenburg Research, a New York-based activist short-seller, published a report warning of bogus preorders, such as the $735 million in sales of 14,000 trucks to E Squared Energy, a company based out of a small residential apartment in Texas that doesn’t operate a vehicle fleet.

Its CEO, Steve Burns, resigned in June 2021 after an internal investigation discredited his claim that the company received 100,000 legitimate preorders for its pickup truck.

Lordstown said it will continue to incur high legal costs as the SEC investigation continues.

Hype, hope and money: Your guide to all the EV SPAC investigations going on

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3 Predictions for Ford’s Q1 earnings

Ford’s onslaught of electric truck news this week seems calculated to lay claim to the profitable segment – and overshadow a new General Motors rival – ahead of its first-quarter financial results Wednesday.

On Monday, the automaker announced the production launch of the all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck, a full-sized version of its popular gas-engine F-150 pickup. The next day, during a live-streamed party to celebrate the F-150 Lightning, CEO Jim Farley revealed that a second, unnamed electric truck is on the way.

The timing of Ford’s announcement may be no coincidence, given that GM was hours from highlighting the all-electric version of its Chevrolet Silverado pickup at its own quarterly earnings call with analysts.

That, and the $50 billion Ford has invested in going electric, is a clear sign of the automaker’s commitment to becoming a volume leader in EVs while continuing to dominate the pickup truck market.

What analysts and TechCrunch will be watching out for 

Per data from Yahoo Finance, analysts expect that Ford generated Q1 2022 earnings of 37 cents per share off revenues of $31.2 billion. That’s a significant dip compared with the $36.2 billion in revenue and 89 cents per share Ford reported the same quarter a year ago.

Ford’s first-quarter U.S. sales dropped 17.4%, due to industry wide pressures on the global supply chain and ability to produce enough cars to meet demand.

Restructuring

Ford completed a historic restructuring in March, spinning off its fledgling EV business from its combustion unit. The EV unit is called Ford Model-e, and the combustion business Ford Blue.

Wall Street applauded Ford’s decision to reorganize operations and will be listening to the earnings call for planning updates from the new management team.

“We believe investors may be very surprised at the strong levels of cash flows from the ‘Ford Blue’ business, and the pace of investment into the cash consuming EV business for the next 3 to 5 years,” Morgan Stanley autos analyst Adam Jonas wrote in a recent report.

F-150 Lightning

The F-150 pickup truck has been the stalwart of Ford’s portfolio for the last 45 years, serving as America’s best-selling truck —  and, for almost all of those years, the country’s best-selling vehicle, too. However, its annual lead over the Chevrolet Silverado and Ram 1500 has narrowed recently, prompting Ford’s aggressive efforts to promote its trucks this week.

Ford spent more than $1 billion to design, develop, and build the all-electric F-150 Lightning, but the 10-figure bet seems likely to pay off. The F-150 nameplate alone has the potential push Ford far ahead of rivals such as GM and Rivian, especially since the Silverado EV won’t go into production until next year and Rivian’s trucks are higher-priced, niche vehicles.

Success hinges on Ford’s efforts to position its battery-electric truck to appeal to its traditional F-150 customer base. So far, demand for the Lightning, which will be assembled at Ford’s Rouge Complex in Dearborn, Michigan, has compelled Ford to double its planned annual production run to 150,000 vehicles.

We’ll be tuning in to hear more about where, when, and how many of the Lightning trucks will be built as we look for evidence behind Ford CEO Jim Farley’s claim that the Ford-150 Lightning is a “Model T” moment.

Second electric truck

CEO Farley’s on-stage announcement that Ford will build a second electric truck just as Lightning starts rolling off the line was unexpected among enthusiasts and industry watchers. However, the teaser left much to the imagination.

Farley didn’t provide details on the new model, but it’s likely to be smaller than the F-150 Lightning full-size pickup. He did say that it will be built at Ford’s new $5.6 billion BlueOval City manufacturing complex in Stanton, Tennessee.

We will be tuning in for any detail on the truck’s price, range, name, or arrival date Ford might share, and we’ll be sure to provide any info made available right here on TechCrunch.

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Why EV startups should’ve hit the brakes before merging with a SPAC

The blank-check boom that made real many electric vehicle manufacturers’ dreams of going public may be nearing a close.

One such company, Faraday Future, is even in danger of being delisted, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week.

Faraday Future, Lordstown Motors, Lucid Motors, Nikola and Canoo — nearly all the EV manufacturers that took a shortcut to an IPO by merging with a publicly traded shell company — have faced SEC scrutiny, sending their once sky-high valuations tumbling.

Faraday makes for a cautionary tale. The beleaguered seven-year-old EV company, which has yet to launch a vehicle, went public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in July last year.

However, just months later, a report from activist short-seller Hindenburg Research led to an internal investigation that resulted in pay cuts for its top two executives and the dismissal of others. Hindenburg, a New York-based investment firm, has sounded alarm bells for several EV makers that took the SPAC route.

Chief among the investigation’s findings was Faraday had misled investors when it said it had received more than 14,000 deposits for its long-awaited FF 91 vehicle. In fact, many of those reservations were actually unpaid, passive indicators of interest.

When you fail to live up to your projections, you really get hammered. That’s when investors start filing lawsuits. John Loehr, managing director of automotive and industrial, AlixPartners

Last week, after the SEC subpoenaed several executives suspected of making other false claims, Faraday said the investigation could delay the filing of its 2021 annual report. Nasdaq said failure to comply with those guidelines puts the company in danger of being delisted from the stock exchange.

When boom goes bust

Over the past couple of years, a bevy of new EV companies — including startups yet to generate revenue or launch a commercial product — merged with SPACs to raise money to reimagine transportation and fulfill their visions of an electrified future. But analysts say that these once-promising businesses could soon be sold for parts — or fold altogether.

“Automotive manufacturing is not a business that’s friendly to new entrants,” said John Loehr, a managing director in the automotive and industrial practice at consulting firm AlixPartners. “You need significant production volumes to make money.”

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Sweden’s Volta raises $260M at a $490M valuation to get its all-electric trucks into production by the end of this year

Volta Trucks — the Swedish electric vehicle startup that believes it can build better urban delivery vehicles and other trucks that are safer and take up a smaller carbon footprint than their gas-guzzling, more clumsy, existing counterparts — has closed a big round of funding to help it through that last mile of work before its Volta Zero trucks go into commercial production later this year.

The company has raised €230 million (around $260 million), a Series C round of funding that appears to value the company at just over $490 million (€433 million). Volta will be using the money to fund engineering and business operations ahead of its first trucks rolling off the assembly line, on the back of what looks like a healthy list of customers: Volta said that its pre-order book for its all-electric Volta Zero — said to be the first fully electric, purpose-built commercial freight vehicle designed for urban freight distribution — is currently totaling over €1.2 billion, covering more than 5,000 vehicles. Volta’s wider business strategy will be based both on selling trucks as well as offering its vehicles on a trucking-as-a-service model.

New York-based Luxor Capital, which led the company’s €37 million Series B in September 2021, is also leading this round. Real estate investment firm Byggmästare Anders J Ahlström (like Volta, based in Stockholm), supply chain services giant Agility, and B-FLEXION (formerly Waypoint Capital) also participated. While Volta has not disclosed its valuation, Pitchbook data notes that it is now just over $490 million — a figure that we have now confirmed also with sources close to the company.

Volta’s growth, and the large amount of capital it has now raised — over $325 million to date — are part of a bigger sea change in the automotive world. Startups, tapping into new manufacturing techniques, new batter technology, and new energy infrastructure, see a ripe opportunity to build new vehicles to disrupt the current status quo with safer and cleaner alternatives.

Investors — likely wowed by the success of electric efforts like Tesla’s with smaller cars — are putting their money behind these ventures to give them more firepower, and more credibility with would-be customers. These are all essential building blocks for catapulting cars into the next wave of technological innovation, where trucks like Volta’s become hardware platforms capable of gathering and working with massive data sets to help the vehicles and the businesses using them operate at new levels of productivity.

That is the theory, at least. The process of getting there inevitably ends up being slower, and more costly, than initial rosy projects, which is another reason why it’s important for companies in the space to raise large rounds and corral together groups of strategic backers to help them get to market.

Volta’s roadmap this year will include investing in its engineering and production operations to build prototypes to verify its designs for the Volta Zero.

These in turn will be rolled out to early customers for pilots in London and Paris, cities where delivery trucks are commonplace but also dangerous, given traffic congestion, narrow streets and the proliferation of cyclists and other micromobility users, making them ideal markets for Volta’s trucks, which claim not only to produce less emissions — the first trucks will have a pure-electric range of 150 – 200 kms (95 – 125 miles) and eliminate an estimated 1.2M tonnes of CO2 by 2025, the company claims — but have significantly better visibility (220 degrees, with the driver sitting in the center of the front seat) for its drivers. Initially, what they will not have, it seems, are self-driving capabilities.

“We are investigating autonomy / self-driving for the future but as a vehicle that’s specifically designed as a city centre distribution and delivery vehicle, the goods within the vehicle will need delivering from the vehicle to their end destination. As a result, the purpose of the vehicle will always need a person involved, making self-driving less relevant for this type of vehicle,” said a spokesperson.

Volta said it will also use some of the funding to continue developing smaller 7.5- and 12-tonne full-electric Volta Zero derivatives (the first model will be 16 tonnes), and eventually a larger 18-tonne model.

The company is building a production facility in Austria, with plans to produce 5,000 vehicles in 2023; 14,000 trucks in 2024; and up to 27,000 trucks in 2025.

“The successful and oversubscribed conclusion of our Series C funding round gives us a positive external validation of our journey,” said Essa Al-Saleh, CEO of Volta Trucks, in a statement. “As an innovator and disruptor in commercial vehicles, we are working at industry-leading pace and have significant ambitions. Today’s closing of the Series C funding round, bringing €230 million into the company, gives us the financial runway to be able to deliver on all our goals as we transition from a start-up to a manufacturer of full-electric trucks. The confirmation of our orderbook of over 5,000 vehicles with an orderbook value exceeding €1.2 billion, gives us and our investors, confidence that our pioneering product and service offering is both wanted and needed by our customers.”

 

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Einride founder Robert Falck on his moral obligation to electrify autonomous trucking

Robert Falck used to work at a Russian trucking factory by day, and by night, he built a nightclub guest list startup. He also collects old books, and once guessed that Chinese author Gao Xingjian would win the Nobel Prize in literature. He grew up on a farm, but has degrees in finance, economics and mechanical engineering.

No, this isn’t a game of two truths and a lie — indeed, these are snippets from the life of a serial entrepreneur who harbors a vendetta against the carbon emissions produced by the world’s trucking industry.

Falck, now the CEO and founder of Swedish autonomous freight company Einride, also worked as the director of manufacturing engineering assembly at Volvo GTO Powertrain. He learned how heavy duty vehicles are produced en masse during his three-and-a-half years there, and also helped start and invest in other companies. Einride, which he founded in 2016, is his seventh company.

Einride’s business is threefold. It currently operates one of Europe’s largest fleets of electric trucks, but its main offering is its electric autonomous pods, self-driving freight trucks built without a front cab and no room for a human operator. The startup also offers an IoT system called Saga that runs through its fleet and helps the company and its shipping partners optimize routes, and manage and electrify fleets.

Einride launched its U.S. operations this month and plans to operate its pods, trucks and OS with partners like GE Appliances, Bridgestone and Oatly. In May, the company raised $110 million to help fund its U.S. expansion, bringing its total funding to $150 million.

We sat down with Falck to talk about Einride’s strategy for scaling revenue, the need for autonomous vehicles to be built on electric platforms and why the future is in startups’ hands.

“The average OEM will need to write off between six and seven years of profit to get rid of the legacy investments in diesel platforms.”

The following interview, part of an ongoing series with founders who are building transportation companies, has been edited for length and clarity.

TechCrunch: In addition to your work at Volvo, you’ve started two nightclub-related platforms and a hunting app. Why start an autonomous trucking company?

Robert Falck: Working at Volvo, producing diesel engines, gearboxes and trucks, made it clear to me the challenges the industry was facing and that I have a moral obligation. I mean, the heavy freight transport industry stands for between 7% to 8% of global CO2 emissions, and the engines that I helped to produce contribute roughly 1% of global CO2 emissions. That’s how much of an impact my previous position was actually making, and I realized that I was part of the problem.

It doesn’t exactly make sense to start a company. You’re either crazy, or if you’re in it for money, you’re not going to get there, because there are much easier ways to make money. But for me, I consider the CO2 emissions to be our generation’s greatest challenge. And it’s quite fascinating how secondary failure becomes when you know that you do it for the right reasons.

You have been described as a serial entrepreneur. Are you with Einride for the long run, or are you already thinking about your next startup?

I think all entrepreneurs get a thrill out of entrepreneurship. And I’m definitely more of an entrepreneur and company builder than I am an administrator and manager. I’m not the kind of person to sit there and keep the status quo. It’s not my thing.

So will your next startup tackle CO2 emissions, but just in a different industry?

A lot of the very traditional industries are ready for disruption, and that’s going to challenge and change society at its core. The main driver behind it is that if you look globally, there’s a huge demand for sustainability.

I think most of the companies that are going to change or save the planet will be created in the next five to 10 years, and there’s lot of potential in some of the more traditional parts of the economy. Everything from trucking and the automotive space to real estate, a lot of those big plays are still up for grabs. I think energy — smart grids and how we structure energy production — is going to be another one of them.

So you think most of the climate tech that’ll solve the biggest issues will come from startups rather than legacy companies?