Startup Ample is on a mission to transform commercial fleets into believers in the power of electric vehicle battery swapping technology.
For the past three years, the company has been piloting electric vehicle battery swapping technology in San Francisco, Madrid and Japan. Ample is currently preparing to convert some of these pilot customers into commercial contracts in 2025.
And supporting Ample's growth is new $25 million in funding from new investor Mitsubishi Corporation.
Compared to Ample's previous investments, this increase seems modest. In 2021, a year of free-flowing money, Ample successfully raised a total of $190 million in two rounds. Ample co-founder and president John de Sousa told TechCrunch that this is the first close in what is expected to be a $75 million round.
Ample provides replaceable battery packs and automatic battery swap stations for commercial fleets. De Souza said the new funding will help the startup expand from dozens of exchange stations and hundreds of Ample-equipped vehicles on the road to hundreds of stations and thousands of vehicles next year. Said it would be helpful.
Perhaps just as important as the cash is Ampoule's partnership with Mitsubishi Corporation. Not to be confused with Mitsubishi. Mitsubishi Corporation has ownership interests in commercial vehicles that are interested in electrification, including Lawson, a popular Japanese convenience store. De Souza said the conglomerate also has a clean energy division that could help Ampoule use renewable energy at its exchange stations.
Ample's first pilot-turned-customer will be Free2Move, a car-sharing service owned by automaker Stellantis. Free2Move operates an all-electric Fiat 500 in Madrid equipped with Ample's battery swapping technology. De Sousa expects Ampoule's presence in Madrid to soon expand into the ride-sharing and last-mile delivery markets. This could be similar to Ample's previous partnership with Drive Sally, which provided Kia Niros with swappable batteries to Uber drivers in San Francisco.
Ample plans to announce commercial customers in Japan in the coming weeks, including those from the Kyoto pilot, the company said. Earlier this year, Ample installed its first battery swapping station in the city as part of a partnership with Japanese energy company ENEOS. Several fleet partners use the station, including MK Taxi, Kyoto City, Kyoto Prefecture, and Nippon Life Insurance Company.
San Francisco-based Ampoule is prioritizing initial commercial expansion in Europe and Japan given the uncertainty surrounding the incoming Trump administration's U.S. EV law, De Souza said.
However, de Sousa believes that if subsidies remain in place, it could be commercialized in the United States.
“We need to understand the impact of having Chinese-made batteries in the United States. [automakers] We need to quickly switch them to places that have free trade agreements with the U.S.,” De Souza said, adding that Ampoule's modular batteries are made with cylindrical batteries made in South Korea and assembled in a California facility. He pointed out that The startup's pitch to OEMs is that they can easily put batteries into EVs on the factory floor without disrupting production lines.
“We'll see what the actual law is and then we'll understand how to work with OEMs to navigate the process and make sure they're compliant,” De Souza said. spoke.