Gas-powered carts are motoring around campuses across the U.S. – whether they’re airports, universities or health care hubs.
A Danish company is seeking to enter the U.S. market with a battery-powered solution.
And it is doing so in concert with Buffalo-based clean energy firm Viridi Parente, which will manufacture almost the entirety of the vehicles from the former American Axle plant it calls home.
Viridi Parente will make about 100 demonstration vehicles in 2021 as Garia Utility shops its electric, low-speed, compact utility vehicles to customers in the U.S.
The vehicles will be branded under Viridi Parente’s “Green Machine” name, joining a product mix that includes a variety of battery-powered construction vehicles.
If all goes according to plan, the production numbers will scale up significantly in the coming years.
“These off-road, gasoline-powered carts are brutally inefficient and have a massive carbon footprint,” founder and CEO Jon Williams said. “We took a look at the last-mile delivery, campus service space, and said, ‘Why don’t we take our core competency and extend into a purpose-built, light-duty truck.”
Garia has more than 900 last-mile vehicles deployed on delivery routes in Sweden through a contract with PostNord.
It’s one piece of a bigger puzzle at Viridi Parente, which is undergoing a $6 million expansion that will bring its total footprint to 190,000 square feet. The company is pursuing a variety of applications for its lithium ion battery technology, including electric vehicles and energy storage for buildings.
Williams recently hired Steve Finch, former plant manager of the General Motors Tonawanda Engine Plant, to help scale its manufacturing.
Viridi Parente raised $30 million in a funding round led by B. Thomas Golisano in late 2019.
The key to the business is finding as many applications as possible for its battery technology – scale will give it purchasing power as it competes with multinational corporations for battery components, Williams said. Sometimes that will mean making the entire vehicle in Buffalo; sometimes it will mean shipping the electric powertrains to partner manufacturers (like it does with Bobcat and Chase Equipment construction vehicles). About six other Green Machine products are in development, he said.
It’s a big plan – one that Williams has been considering since American Axle abandoned the 850,000-square-foot site in 2007 and he acquired it a year later. He compared the process of aligning the technology with the business vision and talent to starting a complicated puzzle.
Now, he says, he’s got the outside done and the design is taking shape.
“You can see how it’s all going to come together,” he said.
