Commercial EV startup Xos Trucks, formerly known as Thor Trucks, has raised $20 million in new funding from a group of investors including Proeza Ventures and BUILD Capital Group. Xos will use the capital to scale up production of its X-Platform chassis. The company anticipates a surge in demand following CARB’s new zero-emissions mandate for commercial vehicles.

Xos also gained some new board members and executives in the deal. Rodolfo Elias Dieck of Proeza Ventures and former Daimler exec Mark Lampert, now at BUILD Capital, have joined the board. Xos has also hired Kingsley Afemikhe as CFO and Tesla alum Rob Ferber as CTO.

Xos’s skateboard chassis for electric Class 6 trucks, the X-Platform, was designed to accommodate a variety of medium-duty bodies, wheelbases and range requirements up to 200 miles. Mexico-based automotive supplier Metalsa helped Xos with the design and is providing components.

UPS has been piloting Xos vehicles on customer routes in LA for the past eight months, and Loomis has ordered another 20 trucks following a 2019 pilot program.

Xos is also developing a Class 8 truck called ET-One, which it hopes to have production-ready by the end of this year.

“We’re excited to continue growing our operations to provide best-in-class last-mile electric vehicles for our customers,” said Dakota Semler, co-founder and CEO of Xos Trucks. “It’s our goal to provide reliable, affordable, and sustainable transportation as the volume of e-commerce demands are increasing, and have accelerated during the pandemic.”

“As orders continue to come in on a monthly basis, we are excited to meet the overwhelming demand for both our medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks,” said Xos Trucks cofounder and COO Giordano Sordoni. “This investment is critical to our team’s growth so we can scale to meet that demand.”

Source: TechCrunch