Singapore startup Singauto Technology is set to introduce fully electric refrigerated trucks for delivering food and pharmaceuticals in the crowded Chinese electric vehicle (EV) market. The company aims to tap into the lucrative niche of cold-chain logistics, which is currently dominated by internal combustion vehicles due to the high power consumption of refrigeration. Singauto plans to address this limitation by leveraging the efficiency of China’s hyper-competitive EV industry and taking advantage of favorable policies, such as restrictions on internal combustion engine trucks in major cities.
Singauto will unveil its first EV cold storage truck model, the S1, at an event in Beijing. The S1 is equipped with an 85 kilowatt-hour battery supplied by China’s CATL, providing a range of 270 km (168 miles) when fully loaded. The company has already received 20,000 pre-orders for the truck and plans to target the fast-growing market for EVs in Southeast Asia.
Singauto has outsourced the design, engineering, and manufacturing of the S1 to Shanghai Launch Automotive Technology, also known as Launch Design. This has allowed the company to reduce the development time to 15 to 18 months, compared to the two to three years typically required by legacy carmakers.
Singauto’s investors include Singapore-based Cynergy Global Investment (CGI) and U.S.-listed company TuSimple. The startup has secured an initial funding round of $20 million and intends to eventually list on a U.S. exchange.
Source: Reuters