Category: Electric Vehicles

Tim Levin 

• Electric-vehicle startup Canoo unveiled two delivery vans Thursday and announced that a third, larger version is in the works. 
• The futuristic-looking MPDV1 and MPDV2 will offer up to 500 cubic feet of cargo room and get an EPA-estimated range of up to 230 miles. 
• Canoo offers customizations like storage lockers and shelving, and said large customers can develop a fleet of custom vans. 
• Limited availability starts in 2022, with full-scale production beginning the following year. 

Tesla may have a lineup of electric luxury cars and a battery-powered semi on the way, but it doesn’t offer any smaller work vehicles for last-mile deliveries and small businesses. EV startup Canoo is targeting that exact space with a new lineup of futuristic electric delivery vans it announced Thursday. 

Canoo unveiled two multi-purpose delivery vehicles — a small MPDV1 and a medium-sized MPDV2 — and announced that a third, larger MPDV3 is in the works as well. The customizable vans can be tailored for use with many different types of businesses, Canoo said. 

Legacy automakers and startups alike have announced plans for battery-powered work vans, with Rivian, Ford, Mercedes-Benz and Bollinger all making inroads into the space in the last couple of years. 

EVs are well-suited for commercial use, because range often poses less of a problem, commercial vehicles tend to follow predictable routes, and EVs are cheaper to run and maintain than gas-powered vehicles. 

Learn more about Canoo’s delivery vehicles — which the company says will hit streets in 2022 — below.

Continue reading… “EV startup Canoo unveiled 2 futuristic electric delivery vehicles to take on vans coming from Rivian, Ford, and Mercedes”

By LUCY YU

The startup world likes to celebrate exciting new technologies, such as AI and autonomous vehicles. But these are newcomers to the party compared to the electric motor, whose precursor technology celebrates its 200th birthday in 2021. Yet today, mobility overwhelmingly runs on fossil fuels. Electric-powered vehicles have been confined to the wealthy, the geeky and the green – not sufficiently affordable, accessible or practical for everyone else. In 2021, startups and industry disruptors will proliferate, heralding a new era of e-mobility for all of us. 

The driver for this is, of course, climate change. Over 77 countries and more than 100 of the world’s biggest cities have committed to achieving net-zero emissions. Globally, transport is one of the largest sources of CO2 and other greenhouse-gas emissions. Governments have imposed future bans on the sale of petrol and diesel-powered vehicles, incentivising more electric-vehicle purchases and taxing the most polluting vehicles, but investors are also keen to accelerate the global shift from pump to plug.

In January 2020, London-based startup Arrival became an electric-first unicorn, attracting sizeable funding from established automakers. Its light commercial vehicles, including buses, vans and delivery robots, will be assembled by a planned network of 1,000 global “microfactories”. In July, Tesla overtook Toyota to become the world’s most valuable carmaker, and Chinese electric-vehicle startup Li Auto raised over $1bn from its IPO.

Continue reading… “E-bikes and e-scooters will transform our cities in 2021”