Electric Last Mile Solutions Inc., a pure-play commercial electric vehicle company based in Troy, has announced a collaboration with Ample Inc. to introduce an industry-first bundled offering that would pair ELMS’ Urban Delivery vehicle with Ample’s modular battery swapping technology.
San Francisco-based Ample’s technology will give ELMS customers the option to subscribe to turnkey energy and mobility solutions. Fleets deploying ELMS EVs will be able to opt into an Energy-as-a-Service (EaaS) solution that would lower initial vehicle cost and allow customers to pay for only the energy they consume.
“By pairing Ample’s and ELMS’ market-leading solutions, customers will now have a choice between full Mobility-as-a-Service or Energy-as-a-Service offerings that allow them to own or operate their vehicle at a significant discount,” says Jonathan Ballon, CSO for ELMS. “These offerings align with our vision to deliver unique, innovative solutions in hardware and software for our fleet customers.”
The two companies also announced a plan to explore a full Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) bundle that would allow customers to entirely forgo ownership and pay for usage by the mile. The bundle would be all inclusive, covering services, insurance, and energy, and would allow commercial fleets to minimize unplanned downtime and leverage differentiated economic models.
ELMS and Ample plan to offer test drives and demonstrations of the battery swapping technology in San Francisco using the Urban Delivery in the fourth quarter of this year. Full rollout of the bundled offering is expected to begin as early as the second quarter of 2022.
“Ample is thrilled to help catalyze electrification in the commercial fleet industry with ELMS,” says John de Souza, co-founder and president of Ample. “Together, we will accelerate large fleet operators’ ambitious electrification goals and their desire for fast energy delivery to enable high utilization of their vehicles with minimal downtime.”
In related news: ELMS today announced the opening of its Urban Mobility Lab in San Francisco, a new tech hub for innovative electric vehicle fleet solutions.
The focus of the lab will be expansive, covering advanced in-vehicle technology, edge-to-edge cloud architecture, data-intensive applications, and machine learning. Specialization in these areas will enable the company to provide customer solutions that increase productivity and decrease the cost of ownership.
“The Urban Mobility Lab will have an unrelenting focus on transforming the urban last mile for our customers through clean, zero emissions electric vehicles,” says Ballon. “We see our automotive engineering and manufacturing expertise at our Michigan, Indiana and China facilities coupled with the agile innovation culture and deep technology talent of Silicon Valley as a winning combination.”
Data will be analyzed from ELMS commercial EVs and their environments, giving the lab crucial information to understand how to improve efficiencies for ELMS fleets. Employees at the Lab will also work with collaborative partners to understand how best to serve all-electric fleets.
The company chose San Francisco due to its large pool of talent in hardware and software engineering, along with it being home to some of the most innovative companies in the transportation industry.
