Vicinity gets credits worth $30 mn to ramp up e-truck production
Canadian commercial EV manufacturer Vicinity Motor has secured $30 mn in credit commitments from two Canadian institutions to fund the production of the company’s class 3 electric truck. With orders having accumulated, Vicinity is in line to deliver.
In October last year, distributor Pioneer placed an order for 1,000 electric trucks with Vicinity and expected deliveries to commence immediately. These were in addition to existing orders worth millions to Vicinity. The company started building the Class 3 truck in 2022 in its Aldergrove, British Columbia, facility and shifted to a new factory in Ferndale, Washington, with 10,000 units of annual capacity the same year.
The credit now granted by the Royal Bank of Canada and Export Development Canada may be used for up to 100% of eligible production costs on the vehicle, excluding labour and overhead from Vicinity’s assembly plants, so the agreement.
In addition to the $30 mn credit commitment for the VMC 1200 trucks, RBC will continue to provide Vicinity with CAD$10 million for use with its existing bus orders and a US$3 million letter of credit facility.
“This new US$30 million credit commitment with our partners at RBC and EDC will prove invaluable as we begin to ramp VMC 1200 production, providing us with the working capital necessary to monetize our significant 1,100-unit order backlog,” said William Trainer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vicinity Motor Corp. “We are confident in our ability to scale production given that the VMC 1200 supply chain is largely unaffected by the global pressures impacting the transit bus business.”
The Vicinity 1200 is a medium-duty electric truck with 6,000 pounds load capacity, a 150-mile range from a 150 kWh battery, a top speed of 65 mph and an 8 kW onboard charger. An earlier announcement revealed Electrovaya as Vicinity’s battery supplier, making NMC chemistry the most likely. The German SME Lion Smart reportedly supplies the drive system.
Apart from the VMC 1200 electric truck, there is also the VMC Optimal-EV shuttle bus. In addition, Vicinity sells its proprietary electric chassis alongside J.B. Poindexter subsidiary EAVX, their partner, for retrofitting delivery vehicles with electric drives.
