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Type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Electric vehicles |
Founded | 2014 |
Founder | Khaled Hassounah, John de Souza |
Headquarters | |
Area served | San Francisco Bay Area |
Services | Battery swapping |
Ample is a San Francisco-based startup that develops battery swapping technology and stations for electric vehicles.
Ample was founded in 2014. In 2021, they raised $160 million in a Series C funding round. [1]
The company operates drive-in stations in the San Francisco Bay Area which robotically swap out vehicle batteries, [2] servicing vehicles including the Mitsubishi Fuso Canter electric truck.
Ample produces modular batteries which replace vehicles' original batteries. [3] Sources compare Ample's business model to previous failed battery swapping startup Better Place, noting that Ample produces "standard, swappable batteries under the belly of any car without its manufacturer having to engineer vehicles around them". [4] [5]
The firm is working with automakers, including Fisker [6] and Stellantis, [7] to adapt battery swapping technology to different vehicle types and to be able to option vehicles with replaceable batteries. [8]
A charging station, also known as a charge point or electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE), is a power supply device that supplies electrical power for recharging plug-in electric vehicles.
Better Place was a venture-backed international company that developed and sold battery charging and battery switching services for electric cars. It was formally based in Palo Alto, California, but the bulk of its planning and operations were steered from Israel, where both its founder Shai Agassi and its chief investors resided.
Battery swapping or battery switching is an electric vehicle technology that allows battery electric vehicles to quickly exchange a discharged battery pack for a fully charged new one, as an alternative to recharging the vehicle via a charging station. Battery swapping is common in electric forklift applications.
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Sunil Paul is an Internet entrepreneur who launched Spring Free EV in 2021. He has previously founded companies such as Brightmail and Freeloader, Inc. He was the co-founder and CEO of Sidecar, a San Francisco, based an on-demand peer-to-peer taxi service that later pivoted away from ridesharing toward deliveries of various items.
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Nuro, Inc. is an American robotics company based in Mountain View, California. Founded by Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson, Nuro develops autonomous delivery vehicles and is the first company to receive an autonomous exemption from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Zoox, Inc. is a subsidiary of Amazon developing autonomous vehicles that provide mobility as a service. It is headquartered in Foster City, California and has offices of operations in the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle, Washington. Zoox sits in the Amazon Devices & Services organization alongside other Amazon units like Amazon Lab126, Amazon Alexa, and Kuiper Systems.
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