Oxbotica and AppliedEV are joining forces to develop self-driving, multi-purpose electric vehicles (EVs) in a step toward commercial driverless autonomy.
The project will take Oxbotica’s autonomous software and integrate it into AppliedEV’s programmable and configurable EV platform. The companies will initially target industrial logistics and goods delivery, but they expect to expand deployment as the vehicles are scaled.
The platform from Applied EV, called Blanc Robot, is a modular architecture designed to operate as a fully autonomous vehicle and it is configurable for specific applications. The architecture comes with either an all-wheel-drive system, an off-road or on-road specification, and battery sizes that are designed for duty and charge cycles with a total efficiency up to 10 miles/kWh.
Oxbotica said it plans to deploy its solution globally over the coming years.
“Oxbotica and AEV both see an opportunity in the market to come together with a unique offering of strong commercial outcomes as early as 12 months,” said Julian Broadbent, founder and CEO of AppliedEV. “The real value of automated vehicles is to operate without the presence of a driver with high levels of safety. There are not many instances where you will find full autonomous vehicles in the market doing a real job, with real economics. Removing the driver and passengers reduces the risk and creates new levels of value and service.”
