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Oxbotica and AppliedEV working on autonomous EV

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Oxbotica and AppliedEV are developing a fully autonomous, multi-purpose electric vehicle for use in a range of environments for commercial applications including industrial logistics and goods delivery.

Image: Oxbotica/AppliedEV

The project will see Oxbotica integrate its autonomous vehicle software with AppliedEV's Blanc Robot, a programmable and configurable EV platform.

The commercial strategy for Oxbotica and AppliedEV is to focus on markets such as industrial logistics and goods delivery that have immediate economic business cases, and a mature regulatory environment to enable deployment at scale. Continued growth is expected in further industries as the number of vehicles is scaled.

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In a statement, Paul Newman, founder & CTO of Oxbotica, said: "Working in collaboration with AppliedEV to provide the market with an autonomy solution comprising both hardware and software with the highest safety standards is a singular and unifying goal. We have an ambitious deployment goal over the coming years, driven by an extraordinary market appetite for a world-class product."

AppliedEV’s Blanc Robot is said to be modular, fully flexible and designed to operate as a fully autonomous vehicle and configurable for specific applications, such as logistics. AppliedEV offers the Blanc Robot with an all-wheel-drive system, in either an off-road or on-road specification. Battery size is matched to the duty and charge cycles, with total efficiency up to 10 miles/kWh.

Blanc Robot
Image: Oxbotica/AppliedEV

Julian Broadbent, founder & CEO of AppliedEV, said: “Oxbotica and AEV both see an opportunity in the market to come together with a unique offering of strong commercial outcomes as early as 12 months. The real value of automated vehicles is to operate without the presence of a driver with high levels of safety. There are not many instances where you will find full autonomous vehicles in the market doing a real job, with real economics. Removing the driver and passengers reduces the risk and creates new levels of value and service.”

Commenting on the collaboration, Alex Harvey, chief of advanced technology of Ocado Technology said: “We are really excited and supportive of this collaboration between Oxbotica and AppliedEV as we see it as an important step on our journey to developing advanced autonomous mobility solutions for the Ocado Smart Platform.”