Trucking startup Harbinger is still a relatively new company, but the flexibility of its electric vehicle platform has helped it capture another customer in a different line of business. This time, Harbinger’s chassis will be used in emergency vehicles for 70-year-old company Frazer.
The two companies announced Wednesday that Frazer will build ambulances on the hybrid version of Harbinger’s platform, as well as larger mobile healthcare vehicles. Frazer will also become a customer of Harbinger’s new energy storage business, which the startup debuted earlier this year in a partnership with Airstream.
The deal shows that companies like Harbinger are finding success with electric and hybrid vehicles despite headwinds in the passenger vehicle space in the United States. Grounded, another startup based in Detroit, revealed this week that it worked with Colgate to develop a small fleet of mobile dental care vehicles.
The key to Harbinger’s success is its flexible platform, co-founder and CEO John Harris said in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch. The simple truck chassis can be shortened or lengthened depending on a customer’s needs, and Harbinger can drop in a range-extending combustion engine if desired. Harbinger is just a few years old, but this one platform already powers RVs (built with THOR Inudstries), FedEx delivery vans, a smaller box truck design, and now ambulances. This has helped the company raise more than $300 million to date.
“If you look across the step van and the RV use case, we’ve got three wheel bases, four different GVWR [gross vehicle weight ratings], and sort of four different powertrain options, with four, five, [or] six battery packs, plus the hybrid across all of that stuff. We have 99.5% part commonality,” Harris said. “That’s the game changer.”
Frazer CEO Laura Griffin told TechCrunch that switching to Harbinger’s hybrid powertrain — which is predominantly electric but leverages the gas engine to top up the battery — was a no-brainer because it helps lower her customers’ total cost of ownership and increases their uptime.
“We’re constantly looking for, what innovations can elevate the experience for our end users, which are going to typically be municipalities, 911 entities, hospitals,” she said. “They’re doing it where it’s comparative to other medium-duty chassis, so it checks all of the boxes for us.”
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Griffin said Frazer will buy the battery-based auxiliary power units from Harbinger and use them on both the newer hybrid emergency vehicles, as well as on older combustion versions. These will replace standard generators and can help first responders (or users of the mobile healthcare vehicles) power medical devices in the field without pulling energy from a vehicle’s battery pack or combustion engine.
“In the back of an emergency vehicle, for instance, an ambulance, you can imagine there’s a lot of equipment, and all of the latest, greatest equipment that’s added on tends to be power based,” Griffin said. “So we are looking for abundant clean power sources that don’t necessarily tie to the chassis.”
Harris sees this becoming a great business no matter how many hybrid vehicles Frazer buys, since the auxiliary power units are useful regardless of powertrain.
“It will be a faster growth curve, because there are thousands of ambulances,” he said. And he’s looking to other industries as well — especially in Harbinger’s home state of California where there are increased restrictions on the use of gas generators.
“We’re seeing a lot of interest from people saying, like, I don’t really want a generator six feet from an operator for 12 hours a day, I’d be happy to save money with batteries. I would be happy to have less emissions,” he said.