Xos Trucks Inc., the electric truck manufacturer formerly known as Thor, has raised $20 million from investors to increase the production of its X-Platform, a Class 6 delivery truck designed for last-mile operations. The deal includes a partnership with Metalsa, which makes metallic components for trucks and buses.
UPS has been testing the electric X-Platform in the Los Angeles area since the start of 2020. So has the cash-in-transit company Loomis. Xos Trucks also produces a fully-electric Class 8 tractor, the ET-One.
“We’re excited to continue growing our operations to provide best-in-class last-mile electric vehicles for our customers,” said Dakota Semler, co-founder and CEO of Xos Trucks. “It’s our goal to provide reliable, affordable, and sustainable transportation as the volume of e-commerce demands are increasing, and have accelerated during the pandemic.”
The financing, which closed earlier in 2020, came from investors including Proeza Ventures, a mobility-focused venture-capitalist firm backed by Metalsa’s holding company, and Build Capital Group. Proeza’s Rodolfo Elias Dieck and Build’s Mark Lampert , a former Daimler executive, were named to Xos board of directors.
As part of the investment, Metalsa has assisted Xos in the design of the X-Platform and is providing components to the chassis.
“We’ve been impressed with what the Xos team has been able to achieve in such a short amount of time and with limited funding,” Elias Dieck said. “Not only have they been able to assemble a high caliber team, but they have designed and engineered a proprietary, reliable and affordable battery pack and skateboard solution for commercial fleets.”
The Los Angeles-based electric trucks startup also announced new hires: Kingsley Afemikhe as its CFO and Rob Ferber, who was the science director at Tesla, as CTO.
“As orders continue to come in on a monthly basis, we are excited to meet the overwhelming demand for both our medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks,” added Xos Trucks co-founder and COO Giordano Sordoni. “This investment is critical to our team’s growth so we can scale to meet that demand.”
California created new rules this summer to make diesel-powered trucks and vans extinct by the middle of the century that includes requirements for fleets to buy more zero-emission vehicles. The initial focus of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulations is on larger fleets with vehicles suitable for early electrification, those fleets’ subhaulers, and the large companies that hire them. It will limit how many diesel-powered vehicles manufacturers can sell in the state starting in 2024. Those limitations will increase until 2045 when all new Class 2 through Class 8 vehicles sold in the union’s largest state must be zero-emission.
“UPS believes in the future of commercial electric vehicles,” Carlton Rose, president of global fleet maintenance and engineering for UPS, said in 2018 when his fleet announced it would use an X-Platform delivery truck. “We want to support the research needed to make advances and the companies developing those innovative products. Performance is critical in our fleet. We are excited to get this vehicle on the road to test how it handles routes in and around Los Angeles.”
