⚡ What everyone should know about the Rivian Electric Delivery Van!

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Happy Monday. This is Electric Avenue. The only e-Mobility newsletter that’s refreshing and light - like a tall glass of Lemonade on a late summer day 🍋.

Here’s what we have for you today:

• 1 Video 🎥

• EV startup funding news 📈

• 3 Links 🔗

• Meme of the week 🤡

Let's dive in!

1 Video 🎥

Check out the video above by Auto Focus (Marques Brownlee) for a great overview on Rivian’s electric delivery van built for Amazon’s inhouse logistics service.

• Amazon ordered 100,000 electric Vans from Rivian back in 2019 along with an investment in the company.

• As of 07/2023, Amazon had more than 5,000 of these custom electric Vans rolled out across the U.S. - with a commitment to operate all 100,000 by 2030.

• Also in 07/2023 Amazon and Rivian started rolling out the first 300 Rivian Vans in Germany as the first country in Europe. This marks the first time any Rivian vehicles were certified for and sold in Europe.

EV Startup Funding News 📈

It's Money Monday 🤑  - this month we've seen more than $87.5M in funding. Here's who secured the bag 💰:

• Several Chinese automakers got funding: NIO announced a $1B raise through convertible notes, Avatr (part of Changan) raised $410m and Neta (part of Hozon Auto) raised close to $1B ahead of a potential IPO.

• Chinese fast charger manufacturer XCharge raised an undisclosed amount from Shell Ventures. This is a follow-on investment for Shell as they had previously invested in XCharge in 2021. XCharge also recently announced plans for a US factory to build NEVI-compliant chargers.

• Ostrom, a Berlin, Germany-based digital energy solutions provider, raised $8M in Series A funding from SE Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Übermorgen Ventures, J12 Ventures, and Adjacent.

• VOOL, a Tallinn, Estonia-based home EV charging provider, raised $3M in Seed funding from Specialist VC and Grant funding from the Estonian Government.

• Japenese Motion Co raised $1.7m for its scheduling optimization software.

• E-mobilio, based in Munich, Germany raised a~$10m Series A led by SET Ventures for its white-label fleet charging solutions.

• TapElectric secures a €1 million investment by LUMO Labs, Shamrock Ventures and Fair Capital Partners. The company offers a cloud-based charger management platform which is completely free to the installer, operator and owner of the charging station. TapElectric monetizes via a 10% payment fee or an alternative subscription fee towards the drivers using the stations.

To see all E-Mobility companies that raised money in the last months, check out our EV&Charging funding database.

Do you know any E-mobility companies that raised recently? -> Send us a link to [email protected]!

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3 Links 🔗

• Hyundai/Genesis/KIA join NACS 🔌: KIA, Hyundai of America and its premium brand Genesis are the latest automakers to officially announce the adoption of Tesla’s NACS connector. Interesting tidbits:

  • The press release talks about CCS-port-equipped Hyundai/Genesis vehicles getting access to Tesla’s network in 2025 - all other automakers have so far advertised access via a Tesla-made CCS-NACS adapter in early 2024.

  • While the NACS plug can technically support up to 1000V, Tesla’s current V3 superchargers can only go up to 500V. For Hyundai’s 800V E-GMP platform-based vehicles this means that their theoretical peak charging rate is reduced from ~230kW to ~100kW due to Hyundais voltage-boosting limitations. Could this be a hint that Tesla needs until 2025 to upgrade existing chargers to 1000V?

  • Starting from Q4 2024, the companies plan to build the North American Charging Standard (NACS) port natively into any electric vehicles sold in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

• Lucid goes down-market ⬇️: Two years after the Air model went first into production, electric automaker Lucid Motors now released the base-model $77,400 Air Pure RWD. This price comes very close to the base manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) of the Air’s closest competitor: Tesla’s Model S. We’ll be curious to see if this new price point can accelerate Lucid’s vehicle deliveries over the coming quarters.

• First 3rd party NACS chargers⚡: According to Plugshare, Chargepoint, and XCharge are the first third-party charger manufacturers that have made fast chargers with native NACS cables publicly available. These are likely prototypes but we expect to see more deployments like these over the next year as major charging networks like Electrify America, Mercedes-Benz, and the 7 automaker charging joint venture launch their first sites with both, CCS and NACS support.

Most-clicked link last week: was our Glossary of EV Terms overview post (Link)

Meme of the Week 🤡

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That's a wrap for this week! Let us know how you feel and leave some feedback (We read every single one of these 🙂 ):

Reader Review of the Week

Selected ⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️ Freakin´ awesome on⚡ What does it take for a Charge Point Operator to be profitable? and wrote:

“Today's post on public CPOs was extremely high quality - great work!"

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. The Electric Avenue team may hold investments in or may otherwise be affiliated with the companies discussed. . Fundin