Rochester Hills-based Prefix Corp. and Cincinnati’s Workhouse Group Inc. are joining forces to finalize the design, development, and production of Workhorse’s N-GEN series all-electric delivery van.
Teams from each company now are building an underlying platform to support 1,200-cubic-foot, 1,000-cubic-foot, and 650-cubic-foot capacity delivery vans. To streamline cost and increase production efficiency, all sizes will share a common cab and chassis configuration.
The new delivery vans will be built on a low-floor chassis platform developed by Workhorse while Prefix develops, builds, and supplies the 100-percent composite cab and body.
Plans call for production to begin at Workhorse’s Union City, Ind., plant in the third quarter of 2019 with deliveries beginning soon after.
“This strategic partnership provides Workhorse with a proven partner that will allow us to remain on schedule to fulfill existing orders we have from our key customers like UPS and DHL,” says Duane Hughes, CEO of Workhorse company CEO. “Through our previous partnerships with Prefix, we’ve already worked closely together and witnessed the quality of their work firsthand. With this new formal partnership in place, we’ll be able to expedite production, and completion, of the industry’s most innovative electric delivery van.”
Workhorse and Prefix have collaborated previously on real-world testing of several Workhorse prototypes, including previous N-GEN 450 delivery vehicles that were used in San Francisco, Calif., and Fairfield, Ohio. The proven-performance demonstrated by these test vehicles will inform the production of these new vehicles, incorporating features such as light-weighting the vehicle to improve mileage, performance, driver safety, and reducing the burden of infrastructure requirements.
“Our new collaboration with Workhorse has been a natural progression, given that we’ve already designed and built several prototype cabs and bodies on the Workhorse electric chassis,” says Eric Zeile, president of Prefix Corp.
