UPDATE 3:08 p.m.: XL Hybrids also announced on Wednesday that it has signed Coca-Cola as a customer. One hundred of the popular soft drink brand's service trucks will receive XL Hybrid's fuel efficient hybrid makeover, just in time for 2014.
"The fact that Coke has rolled this out across an entire segment of their fleet is really a strong statement of our value proposition...It really puts us in a good position to scale rapidly across more customers and the industry as a whole," Tod Hynes, the president of XL Hybrids, told BostInno in a conversation.
Boston-born XL Hybrids announced on Wednesday that it has secured a $3 million Series C debt financing from WindSail Capital Group. The loan will keep the company, which develops low-cost hybrid electric powertrains designed specifically for class 1 through 4 commercial fleet vehicles, afloat while it seeks to raise new funding in 2014. XL Hybrids will use these funds to cover working capital and as well as operating expenses as it grows sales and deliveries of its technology to its Fortune 500 customers.
"We've been following them for a couple years now, and very much liked their management team, approach to the market and business model," WindSail Capital Group Managing Director Michael Rand told BostInno in a conversation. "They've really reached the stage where they are transitioning from developing their technology to having to seed large-scale orders to deploy their technology."
The company raised $6 million in Series B in early 2013, a sum which the firm put towards creating its third-gen XL3 inline hybrid electric powertrain technology, growing sales and establishing production capacity of more than 1,000 units per year. Since its start in 2008, XL Hybrids has raised around $8 million in both equity and debt funding.
XL Hybrids expects to raise its Series C equity round at some point in the New Year.
