Einride, the Swedish startup known for its unusual-looking electric and autonomous pods that are designed to carry freight, has raised $110 million to help fund its expansion in Europe and into the United States.
The Series B round,
which far exceeds its previous raises of $10 million in 2020 and $25 million in 2019, included new
investors Temasek, Soros Fund Management LLC, Northzone and Maersk Growth. The
company said Thursday that existing investors EQT Ventures, Plum Alley,
Norrsken VC, Ericsson and NordicNinja VC also participated in the round.
Einride has
raised a total of $150 million to date. The company didn't share its post-money
valuation.
The company, founded
in 2016 by Robert Falck, Linnéa Kornehed, and Filip Lilja, has two kinds of
vehicles: connected, electric heavy trucks driven by humans and its driverless
Pods.
The electric trucks do
much the freight-shuttling work today for customers like Swedish food producer
Oatly, Coca-Cola, Lidl and Electrolux. The company's pitch is that its electric
trucks reduce emissions for its customers by 94% compared to driving with
diesel. Einride has also developed a digital platform for carriers that handles
planning, scheduling and routing as well as invoices and billing.
The company is
perhaps best known for its Einride Pod — once called the T-Pod — a self-driving
truck that doesn't have a cab and can be controlled remotely. The
first-generation vehicle has been tested on public roads in Sweden and even
carried freight in a pilot program for Oatly. In October, the unveiled a line of next-generation pod
freight-carrying vehicles that depending on its level of autonomy will begin
shipping to customers as early as this year.
Einride will be
using this significant injection of capital to fulfill current customer
contracts, double its 100-person workforce by the end of the year and expand in
Europe and into the United States, according to CEO Robert Falck.
Einride will
have operations up and running in the U.S. before the end of the year and are
looking to set up a headquarters in Austin, Texas, and additional offices in
New York and Silicon Valley, Falck said in an email. Global agreements are in
place with brands such as Oatly, which includes U.S. operations, with more to
be announced soon, he added.
As Einride
continues to scale its human-powered electric trucking operation, it is also
working on the long-term goal of rolling out commercial driverless Pods.
Einride has said its new Pods will be available with differing levels of
autonomy and functionality based on its internal Autonomous Electric Transport
(AET) classification system, which ranges from levels 1 to 5.
Its AET 1 Pod is
for closed facilities with predetermined routes that are best suited for
fully-autonomous operation. The constraints expand from there with Pods at AET
2 designed for closed facility operation with an added capability to traverse
public roads over short distances between destinations. Einride has said that
these first two level of Pods will begin shipping to customers starting in
2021.
Level 3 allows
for operation on backroads and less busy main roads between facilities, at a
maximum operating speed of 28 mph. At Level 4, under Einride's system, the Pod
will operate autonomously on freeways and other major roads at up to 52 mph.
Einride has said that Levels 3 and 4 will ship to customers in 2022 and 2023.
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