Australian-based startup Applied Electric Vehicles (Applied EV) has received a $30.7 million investment from the federal government for its Suzuki Jimny-based ‘Blanc Robot’ autonomous vehicle project – funding that could eventually see the vehicles operating on public roads.
funding comes from the government’s $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC), which has invested $1 so far. In Australia, there are 19 billion companies that have s in their respective industries.
We are proud to be investing in a company that promotes Australian innovation, develops the country’s manufacturing capabilities and creates very skilled jobs.” NRFC CEO David Gall said in an interview with The MailOnline on Monday.
“By focusing on autonomous electric vehicles for industrial use, [Applied EV] has created a sound and scalable business model.”
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A mix of electronics and software that allows autonomous electric vehicles to be operated according to the highest global safety standards in conditions remote and dangerous for human drivers, is a part of its proprietary digital control system called “Its”. – ’.
It will also help Applied Ev produce 100 examples of its Blanc Robot cab-less autonomous cars, developed in Melbourne under co-founder, former Holden designer and engineer Julian Broadbent.
Today, the company has 20 vehicles deployed; its physical site is a vehicle and its ‘Digital Backbone’ is now in its sixth generation. This is designed to be part of vehicle logistics chains, and more industries – including automakers – are increasingly dependent on autonomy and robotics across assembly lines and in warehousing.
“The world has started to believe that autonomous driving will happen,” Mr Broadbent told Forbes.
Unless you’re a logistics company or an operator of fleets, your entire fleet is changing overnight but if you don’t think about how to have autonomous cars in your fleet and competitors do, you know you won’ll miss out. Paraphrasingr ’It is.
The history of Mr Broadbent is his work at former Australian automaker Holden, both locally and overseas roles with parent company General Motors (GM), as well as running startups in Silicon Valley.
Applied EV was formed in 2015 and invested by Japanese automaker Suzuki after an agreement between the companies in 2021, which the company says has grown its development programme faster.
In the context of Suzuki’s involvement, Applied EV is looking to build thousands of its Blanc Robot platforms using the underpinnings of the popular Suzuki Jimny SUV into what Mr Broadbent calls a ready market rather than pursue the more distant goal of fully autonomous passenger cars.
Mr Broadbent added that when traditional automotive manufacturing left Australia, we had an opportunity ‘in the hands of local engineering talent and building something truly innovative from scratch’.
Manufacturing components will be here in Australia,’ said . Much of that technology and development of it will be done here, including low-volume manufacturing (e.g. – ’.
Despite Suzuki’s vehicle frames being built, the box-controlling boxes that control them are made in Melbourne… but there is new jobs as well coming in what I call ‘Applied EV 2’. The Paraphrast is 0’, and it has been suggested that the should be ‘addressed to this point of view’.
“We have to employ a lot of people to manage the fleets that are in operation remotely.”
The company employed 113 people prior to the NRFC funding announcement.
He said ‘We need to be very data analytics and telemetry. So we have to support a lot of . Mr Broadbent said ‘We see the company growing in Australia and around the world so, we do.
Similarly, Applied EV has also invested in Japan Post which operates an estimated 80,000-strong fleet of around 80% vehicles – potentially leading to the first deployment of the Australian company’s self-powered technology on public roads.
It is a really slow urban kind of work with us.’ They are looking at very low-speed, s like this. The Applied EV CEO said ‘There are many cities in Japan where they have big challenges because of reductions in populations.
It’s a problem where there is no driver in town to do all the jobs this company needs to work,’ said ‘We’re doing this.
“It’s what I would call a megatrend-size challenge, but the first steps are quite small.”
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