California’s Motiv Power Systems, a supplier of all-electric medium-duty chassis for buses and trucks, has secured $60 million in equity funding to open a new engineering and manufacturing facility in Detroit.
The Series B round of investment was led by investors GMAG Holdings Corp. and Winnebago Industries and will support the overall growth of the company.
Motiv says establishing an engineering and manufacturing center in Detroit will strengthen its Midwest presence, bring it closer to customers and partners in the region, and enable manufacturing growth through its partners. Additionally, the company expects to continue its focus on market development, technology innovation, and product differentiation in order to increase electric vehicle adoption throughout the transportation industry.
“As we have started deploying our products to some of the largest fleet customers in the U.S., we have been looking to expand our workforce and facilities to better support the growing demand we are seeing in the market,” says Matt O’Leary, CEO of Motiv Power Systems. “With their generous investments, GMAG Holdings and Winnebago are setting Motiv up for success and leadership as the market for commercial EVs approaches an inflection point.”
Vehicles powered by Motiv’s EPIC chassis have accumulated more than 750,000 real-world miles driven by customers such as Aramark, Bimbo Bakeries USA, the U.S. Postal Service, the city of Mountain View, Calif, and more than a dozen school districts.
“Over the last 10 years, Motiv has proven its technology and business model,” says Matt Gallaher, chief financial officer of GMAG Holdings Corp. “The commercial transportation industry is on the cusp of significant growth in electrification. We strongly believe in Motiv’s technology as well as the management team driving its growth. We are excited to further support them as the company scales to meet the demand of the growing commercial EV market.”
Ashis Bhattacharya, vice president of business development for specialty vehicles and advanced technology at Winnebago, says, “Our customers are hungry for all-electric mobile solutions developed on our commercial shells, especially in California. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with Motiv and growing the electric commercial segment worldwide.”
