Mobility incubator Detroit Smart Parking Lab has welcomed four new startups, officials announced Thursday.
The startups have received more than $250,000 in grant funding from the Michigan Mobility Funding Platform and will use the funds to test and demonstrate autonomous and electric vehicle charging technologies over the next six months.
Kevin Mull, Bedrock’s senior urban strategy and innovation director, said the four selected companies are a perfect fit for the incubator’s recently launched Autonomous Mobility Initiative, as they focus on areas such as smart parking technology, electric vehicle charging infrastructure and first- and last-mile logistics.
“The four companies that applied best combined autonomous operation in their products with addressing one of our focus areas,” Maru said.
Mahr said more than 20 companies applied internationally. The four companies selected are:
Italy-based ALBA Robot is testing and demonstrating how autonomous personal mobility vehicle services can benefit people with disabilities through on-demand AV transportation to facilities such as airports, hospitals, and other community facilities.
AuTowed LLC, a joint venture between the Indiana group and a Michigan-based partner, is developing an autonomous prototype to simplify and solve freight transportation challenges by connecting, disconnecting and parking cargo trailers.
Novi-based ION Dynamics is focused on on-demand EV charging. The company has demonstrated that its autonomous charging bots can reduce the cost of installing EV charging equipment by more than 50% compared to traditional fixed charging stations.
California-based Joule Labs will establish a permanent base in Michigan to test and prepare its autonomous charging system for commercialization, with the goal of partnering with other energy companies and commercial real estate firms in Detroit to expand automated charging stations across the state.
Bedrock, Bosch and Ford Motor Co., Michigan launched DSPL in 2021, which is operated by NextEnergy and Park Rite out of the first floor of The Assembly, 1702 W. Fort St.
DSPL officials said this latest group of startups will build on the success of 20 previous companies that have been working on autonomous parking, EV charging and mobility infrastructure technologies.
“Detroit is a special place for us, as with companies like Bedrock leading the charge and putting a lot of money and focus into this space, Detroit is emerging as a hub for all things innovation and modern technology,” said Josh Bitterman, head of business development at ION Dynamics. “Detroit is the perfect place to showcase our solutions to businesses and government officials who are seeing a growing need for this type of infrastructure.”
Bitterman said he is part of a four-person team that plans to launch an autonomous robot within the next six months to a year, which will be equipped with a high-capacity battery.
“This creates tremendous flexibility for not only the end user, but also the property owner and business owner in that they no longer have to dedicate a large portion of their property to EV charging,” he said. “They can provide charging service on demand, when and where it’s needed.”
Because the unit is mobile, the equipment can be taken off the power grid, saving huge amounts of money, Bitterman said.
“Businesses and property owners want to electrify to meet this growing demand, but stationary charging stations are prohibitively expensive, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions, to install one time,” he said. “So by taking most of our equipment off-grid and powering it with these distributed energy resources that operate globally and autonomously, we can save businesses and property owners hundreds of thousands of dollars and give them a lot of flexibility to electrify.”
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