Nevoya collects $ 9.3 million while its fleet of EV trucks reached cost parity with diesel

Based in Los Angeles Nevoya came out of stealth last year with the ambitious objective of Breaking the EV Truck Adoption Logjam. Nevoya has made enough progress on its objective of attracting investors – and a seed lap of $ 9.3 million – to help it evolve even faster.

The young company, which buys electric trucks and offers them to senders, now transports goods for 10 different companies from fortune 500. More importantly, it offers services as a carrier for California companies at cost parity with similar size diesel trucks.

This is a remarkable achievement, in particular at a time to increase anti -EV opposites – fed by an administration which has publicly criticized green energy.

The founder Sami Khan is imperturbable.

The idea of reducing carbon emissions is always attractive for fortune 500, Khan told Techcrunch. Khan said he also believed that Nevoya only managed a much faster, leaner and better operators – inherited – largely by taking advantage of AI.

Nevoya applies AI to optimize trucking routes, and match and balance the loads with the right trucks to maximize efficiency while minimizing energy consumption. The company also uses AI to help sort charge schedules and battery management.

“When we started managing trucking business,” said Khan, “we looked at what (everyone) was doing, and we meticulously examined every minute per minute of what was going on. We came to the conclusion that 90% of what was going on could be automated or semi-automated.”

Khan said Nevoya’s automation has been to obtain information from drivers faster, with fewer errors than humans would do. He also declared that the exploitation of the AI does not replace the distributors, but rather free them to better communicate with the customers of Nevoya.

The “Go Big” of financing the enigma

Khan plans to continue to develop this model thanks to the new Nevoya seed lap – an effort to collect funds which was initially much more conservative.

At the end of last year, with a pre-series round in the rear view mirror, and an early traction by building the fully electric Caminnage fleet of Nevoya, Khan found himself weighing options to develop his business: take an interior tour with existing investors? Or go bigger?

It was then that Khan spoke with Shawn XU of Lower carbon capital. Xu had presented Khan and the co-founder John Verdon (the former chief executive officer) and had followed Nevoya closely, but had not yet invested. Xu’s message was clear: go ahead.

“(XU) has essentially said, like no, no, no, take a big tour now. We are going to direct it, and we are going to run with it,” said Khan. “It was, really validated, frankly, to have an investor who, in the first round, said:” We are going to sit on the touch “, then enter and pre -empt the next round.”

LowerCarbon ended up directing the Nowya $ 9.3 million seed series, which has just closed, Khan in Techcrunch told an exclusive interview. Floating Point and LMNT Ventures also joined existing investors Third Sphere, Stepchange and Never Lift. Qasar Younis, the founder and CEO of Buzzy Auto-Driving Company applied intuition, also invested.

This funding will go to the expansion of the Nevoya beyond California in new states like Texas. The company already transports freight to Houston and Dallas.

An expansion of Texas

This will help Nevoya generate more income, although Khan quickly stressed that there is a lot of work to do on these new markets before they can also reach cost parity with diesel trucks. He also said that Nevoya should be more creative with the way he manages his fleets in places like Texas because there is less load infrastructure.

This implies bypassing solutions such as truck loads during the night at stations generally intended for passenger vehicles or school bus deposits when the chargers are not used.

Khan managed to win as a winner. These locations obtain additional income during the hours outside the point, and Nevoya can develop rapidly with a lower initial cost. He said the plan was finally to invest in the construction of a more dedicated load infrastructure.

To manage this expansion, Khan said that Nevoya is based on the same model as companies like Uber used when she entered new locations. Nevoya hires directors general who will execute their own locations as a startup with-startup.

“This kind of competitive element to oppose these incredibly intelligent and talented general directors against each other is really very effective in driving this next level of performance for the company,” he said.

Xu said he had first prevented from investing in Nevoya because he wanted the company to prove that it could strike this cost parity with diesel.

“We want to understand the appetite and validation of the market,” he recalls. But, he said, he also considered that “a company like this should exist”.

While Xu saw Nevoya progress, he remembered having said to Khan: “What would it look like if you raised much more than what you expected to raise?” Both spoke of using more artificial intelligence to optimize their fleet management, while keeping an eye on an autonomous future (hence the inclusion of Younis of applied intuition in the Tour).

“They obtain a cost per lower mile. They obtain lower maintenance costs. AI orchestration for the effectiveness of the itinerary optimization begins to bear fruit,” he said. “So yes, we ended up increasing a much larger round that ended up being even more overwritten than we had planned. And now we have left for the races.”