Chanje Brings Globally Scaled EV to US Medium-duty Market

Chanje's first North American offering will be a Class 5, 16,500-lb GVW all-electric panel van with a 100-mile range.

A California-based electric vehicle and energy solutions company, Chanje, will bring to the U.S. market in the fourth quarter a Class 5 panel van that it says can be economically produced at a scale and price not previously possible. The company says it already has volume orders for Q4 delivery of its ground-up designed and purpose-built all-electric vehicle.

Chanje is a privately held, U.S. registered corporation with initial strategic investment from Hong Kong-based FDG Electric Vehicles Limited (HKEX:00729). FDG brings an investment more than $1 billion in medium-duty EV R&D to the partnership. Chanje provides global expertise from the transportation sector through a deep understanding of clean-energy vehicle engineering and adoption.

Chanje says it chose to partner with FDG in order to leverage the economies of scale found in the Central Asian markets.

Chanje CEO, Bryan Hansel, told Heavy Duty Trucking the vehicle was designed from the start as a long-life, global-platform vehicle that could leverage not only U.S. domestic volume but also to capture significant market share in Europe as well as Asia.

"We have designed a vehicle that will play well in several different markets so that we can leverage the supply chain and get that volume," he says. "For the first time, the North American fleet market has an opportunity to access a world-class, high quality and cost effective commercial electric truck."

The first model to be released in the U.S. is a Class 5 commercial panel van equipped to haul a payload of up to 6,000 pounds on an "average" urban delivery route of about 70 miles a day. Hansel says the truck will be a high-roof model with roughly double the cubic capacity of current EV offerings and a ...Read the rest of this story

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