Ample announces fresh capital & cooperation with Uber
US battery swap startup Ample has raised another $50 million. The fresh capital comes from investors Blackstone and Banco Santander. In addition, Ample announced a cooperation with Uber to bring its technology to Europe.
Ample had already closed a Series C financing round of 160 million dollars in August. At that time, existing investors such as Eneos and Shell Ventures participated, but also new investors such as Momentum Venture Capital, the Thai state oil and gas company PTT and the financial investor Rose Park Advisors. The $50 million investment that now follows comes from the aforementioned investor duo. Blackstone will also join the Ample board, an accompanying statement said.
Ample was founded seven years ago and has been working on its technology in the background for a long time. Unlike Chinese carmakers Nio and Xpeng, Ample’s battery-swapping technology is intended to work across manufacturers. The American company is aiming for an automated battery change that takes less than ten minutes. The process should “work with any electric vehicle” and be “as cheap as petrol”, Ample announced in an earlier statement.
After going public earlier this year, the company announced two partnerships with investors Shell and Eneos to launch pilot projects in the US and Japan. Test facilities are also planned in Madrid and Singapore. Furthermore, in the current announcement, Ample announces an expansion of its cooperation with Uber and, in the course of this, an expansion into Europe.
In the US, Ample has already been working with Uber since 2020 to “participate as a key partner in Uber’s global electrification strategy”. Specifically, Ample provides Uber drivers in California with its battery-swapping technology. In the future, this concept will be transferred to Uber in Europe. It says that “drivers in the European Uber fleet will have access to our autonomous battery swap stations”. However, Ample does not specify a timetable in its statement.
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