Los Angeles-based Nevoya came out of stealth last year with the ambitious goal of breaking the EV truck adoption logjam. Nevoya made enough progress on its goal to attract investors — and a $9.3 million seed round — to help it move even faster.
The young company, which buys electric trucks and offers them to shippers, is now carrying goods for 10 different Fortune 500 companies. More importantly, it’s offering services as a carrier to those companies in California at cost parity with similar-sized diesel trucks.
It’s a noteworthy accomplishment, especially at a time of increasing anti-EV headwinds – fueled by an administration that has publicly criticized green energy.
Founder Sami Khan is unfazed.
The idea of lowering carbon emissions is still attractive to the Fortune 500s, Khan told TechCrunch. Khan said he also believes Nevoya is just running a much faster, leaner, and better carrier business than legacy operators – in large part by leveraging AI.
Nevoya applies AI to optimize trucking routes, and matching and balancing loads with the right trucks to maximize efficiency while minimizing energy consumption. The company also uses AI to help sort out charging schedules and battery management.
“When we started running the trucking business,” Khan said, “we looked at what [everybody was] doing, and we meticulously looked at every minute-by-minute of what was going on. We came to the conclusion that 90% of what was going on could be automated or semi-automated.”
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Khan said Nevoya’s automation has been getting information to drivers faster, with fewer mistakes than humans would make. He also said that leveraging AI is not replacing dispatchers, but rather freeing them up to better communicate with Nevoya’s customers.
The ‘go big’ funding conundrum
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