VCs double down on fintech Coast, which aims to be the Brex for ‘real-world’ industriesThe expense management arena is a crowded one, with well-funded players such as Brex, Ramp and Navan all clamoring for market share.
While Coast declined to divulge hard revenue figures, CEO Simon told TechCrunch that it saw about 550% increase in annualized revenue and payment volume growth in 2023.
That growth prompted its existing investors to double down on the company, while attracting a new backer as well.
Today, Coast is announcing that it has raised an additional $25 million in venture capital and $67 million in debt financing.
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Chances are you may have noticed that many commercial vehicles are now electric vehicles — think about delivery vans, telecom minivans, utility maintenance trucks, etc.
That’s why Pelikan Mobility has been building a platform and a leasing solution that address this challenge caused by the switch to EVs for commercial fleets.
Many companies lease their commercial vehicles and Pelikan Mobility believes that pricing is broken for commercial EVs.
Leasing contracts — even for commercial vehicles, even for electric vehicles — end far too quickly.
It will also have to raise a debt fund for that new business as Pelikan Mobility plans to address large customers.
When electric-vehicle startup Telo Trucks announced its pint-sized pickup, people predictably went nuts.
Fleet customers went nuts, too.
“There’s this unspoken thing where fleet companies that do work in cities can no longer buy small trucks,” Jason Marks, Telo Truck’s co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch.
“We will still want to address the early users, and we want to intermingle that with delivering to bigger fleet customers at the same time.”With that opportunity comes more funding.
Rivian is notably similar in that it’s chasing both consumers and fleet customers, though its production ramp is radically different.
Lucid Motors is stuck in a fight over the name of its Gravity SUVLucid Motors is at risk of losing the trademark for the name of its Gravity SUV, just months before the company is supposed to start production.
Google Ventures-backed EV charging company Gravity Inc. filed a “petition for cancellation” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) in December asking for Lucid’s Gravity trademark to be revoked.
“We feel very, very confident about it,” Moshe Cohen, Gravity Inc.’s CEO, said of the petition in an interview with TechCrunch.
Lucid, in its answer to the petition filed last week, says that Gravity does not currently operate an EV fleet and argues that consumers would not be confused by the two different uses of the Gravity name.
“[Lucid] believes that it is being and will continue to be damaged by [Gravity Inc.’s] registration,” the company writes.
Hertz is selling off a third of its electric vehicle fleet, which is predominantly made up of Teslas, and will buy gas cars with some of the money it makes from the sales.
Hertz’s move to slash its EV fleet comes as electric vehicle sales growth has cooled from record highs.
Just two years ago, Hertz announced plans to buy 100,000 EVs from Tesla by the end of 2022.
Instead, as of October 2023, Hertz had only purchased 35,000 Teslas and its entire electric fleet included about 50,000 EVs total.
It announced plans in 2022 to buy up to 175,000 EVs from General Motors, and another 65,000 from Polestar.
Gbike acquired a local micromobility platform called ZET from Hyundai Motor for an undisclosed amount last year to bolster its technological synergies.
Gbike posted an EBITDA of $40 million and revenue of $13.7 million in 2022, Yoon said.
“Based on this fully integrated capability, we set out our vision to innovate the micromobility ecosystem through battery-[swapping] infrastructure.
One of the things that set Gbike apart from its competitors is its capability to build its own vehicles — e-scooters, e-bikes and batteries, Yoon mentioned.
Gbike launched its own-developed e-bikes in May last year and now operates a fleet of 35,000 e-bikes.
Fleet is a French startup that deploys devices with long-term leasing contracts. The company has been growing nicely over the past four years, and it reinvests as much of its…
