CityFreighter Inc.

The Last Mile Industry faces a fast-growing demand for sustainable Vehicles, fitted to their individual needs

The transportation and logistics industry faces many changes. By 2030, 70% of all people will live in larger cities and this growth will have an impact on urban logistics. One consequence is that the demand for sustainable, compact, pollution-free commercial vehicles is steadily growing. Furthermore, upcoming regulatory changes for inner-city traffic will lead to a rapid increase in the sales of commercial electric vehicles for urban deliveries.  

We believe the problem in the industry lies beyond just swapping fossil fuel operated motors with electric ones. Electric drivetrains and batteries are quickly becoming commodities. Now we can focus on what is important: to develop customized vehicle concepts, which seamlessly integrate into the existing infrastructures and evolving business requirements of fleet operators, optimizing TCO (total cost of ownership).

Our Solution - CF1 The Modular Concept 

CityFreighter's modular approach enables customization of key infrastructure components, serial production of commercial vehicles, which is a key differentiator compared to large OEMs and other competitors. Developing fully customized trucks for large fleet operators becomes a reality.

Assembly and Distribution Concept

 The Market

Unparalleled Demand for Last-Mile Transport, accelerated by COVID-19

E-commerce has grown significantly in the past decade, as new digital business models and smarter logistics concepts enable both instant and same-day deliveries (respectively growing 36% and 17% a year). While COVID-19 has amplified and accelerated this trend, elevated e-commerce and time-definite delivery levels should remain above the pre-COVID-19 baseline in the long term

Additionally, new categories have gained momentum online, such as groceries and furniture. To illustrate, China’s food delivery leader, Meituan Dianping, experienced an increase in grocery deliveries in March and April of 400%. In the United States, research suggests e-commerce spending will grow for child products, household suppliers, groceries, and food takeout, even in the longer term-hence the change in consumer habits will be “sticky”

Source: McKinsey & Company Eric Hannon, Bernd Heid, Anja Huber, Christoph Klink

Target Markets

Global Structure Plan

Competition

The market is currently divided into three sections:

• Large OEMs are converting existing platforms to electric vehicles - we feel that this is not really sustainable and economical on the long-range
• There are a lot of third parties who are converting existing trucks into electric, mostly supported by grants ("Volkswagen money"). Log delivery times and not a future proof business concept as grants will not stay forever
• Independent companies, developing electric trucks from scratch

And here is a comparison of the market standard, the typical cab design we know from several manufacturers (left), and our approach (right)

CityFreighter belongs to the last section of independent companies and there are only two other companies around which are actively moving forward, Workhorse (US) and Arrival (UK). Well, and there is Rivian, which is somehow out of competition, as they are pretty much covered the next years by a huge development and production contract (100,000 vans) they received from AMAZON. 

Workhorse

Workhorse is a company listed on the stock market and has recently received the certification for its C650 truck. They have been struggling for some time but it seems that they are now moving on. The market is big enough and for the long term success of commercial electric vehicles, it is important that we all collaborate and support our other "market  participants" -competition is a word from the past

ARRIVAL

Founded by a Russian billionaire who built up a plant in the UK. Arrival has been moving forward with their concept and recently received an investment from Hyundai of $100 million and an order of 10,000 vehicles from the logistics company UPS.

The concept of Arrival has similarities with our CityFreighter concept. They have a modular platform with a structural kit system, and they are planning to operate micro-factories as well. We will demonstrate with our next step, building the serial chassis, that our concept is faster, more flexible, and more economical 

Here is an image form an internal comparison study we did, with different photoshop enhanced designs of the CF1

How things have been developed so far - Proof of Concept

 There is a huge demand in the US for class 3 (over 10,000 pounds) and in Europe for trucks with a GVWR of up to 4.25 tons, (they can be driven there with a basic driver's license). Existing OEMs are mostly planning to produce panel vans in the next years but there is further demand for individual vehicle solutions, for different industries. Right now, only converted vehicles are available, at a high cost and they are not really sustainable.

So we started to create a concept focusing on speeding up the-time-to-market and further trying to decrease the standard exorbitant development costs in the automotive industry significantly. We really do not have the intention to reinvent the wheel. For the brake system, the steering,  the axles, and others, we are using existing and proven parts. They are standard commodities. Going this way enables us to bypass the standard stuff much faster and to concentrate on to innovate on more important needs of the industry

When talking to several investors, we mostly heard that we are too ambitious, so we wanted to make a difference by proving that our concept works. Just equipped with a plan, some virtual drawings, and our unlimited ambitions, we raised a couple of hundred thousand dollars from friends and small investors and ran a campaign on StartEngine.

Then we started to build the prototype in our European facility, a job that took endless hours on a 24/7 base for months. But by believing that nothing is impossible we did it and shipped the truck to Los Angeles. We had to ship it by air-cargo because we just finished it a couple of days before the show started.

The presentation at the ACT show has been a real blast and we were overwhelmed from the applause we got from other industry players and large OEMs

After the show, we got approached by two well-known OEMs from the commercial vehicle industry, and we were seriously discussing a possible partnership. But we recognized that we needed to fine-tune our business model and to move on to the next phase first.

The Form Factor, Drive by Wire and more about the Technology

The industry has a problem finding drivers, so our point to support finding potential candidates is to create a clean cockpit environment and put a bit more effort into the virtual design of the truck, to make the workspace attractive and efficient. Why hasn't it been done before?

Let’s talk about our intelligent keyless locking system which recognizes in which zone of the truck the driver currently is, and opens or closes doors, as well as the freight door, accordingly.

We are also looking into new technologies like the drive-by-wire which offers more flexibility and freedom of design. We are going to implement this.

Our truck will be designed for the urban delivery purpose, a range of 100-150 miles, a front-drive electric axle, a low-floor concept for easy access, to avoid using an electric lift to save cost, weight, and time. The battery will vary between 75 and 90 kWh. High Speed at around 60 miles/h. Charging overnight at the depot, fast charging will be offered as an option. As stated before, we believe electric motors and batteries will become commodities. Our focus lies on designing and developing driver and customer-oriented logistic solutions.

Traction

The intelligent mobile hub - future development of CityFreighter

Urban delivery of the future requires to develop intelligent solutions in many areas. Our mobile hub concept has been gaining a lot of interest. A major University in California is interested in doing a pilot with us.

Commercial Filming for VERIZON

In between, we were invited, together with our friends from CANOO, to become part of a TV commercial for VERIZON. It has has been a very exciting experience. Unfortunately, it has not yet been aired on tv.

Next Step

Covid-19 blocked our efforts to move further. Our team from different countries got separated and the German team is currently not able to return to Los Angeles. 

We are now planning to do the next step in Europe and continue in California, once things get back to normal".  We want to raise funds on Wefunder now, to be able to move on with our operations, to start building the serial chassis prototype.

Our strategy is to raise funds on Wefunder, to support building the beta version of our new serial chassis, together with the new driver`s cabin and the cargo area system.

Once this has been finalized, we are very much convinced to have enough leverage to be able to continue our talks with possible collaboration partners and larger investors to secure funding for phase III.

Getting to the Facts

The high potential the market offers is without a doubt. Execution is the key to success. We did a pretty conservative calculation about the revenues we believe we could reach from 2022-2026, after SOP (start of production). Those numbers reflect the total volume of different chassis modules we predict we could sell in different markets within the next five years after SOP. 

Disclaimer: This chart contains forward-looking projections which can not be guaranteed.

Milestones

Here is our Roadmap until the end of 2021. Please be advised that to be able to realize those milestones, we would need to achieve substantial additional funding after this campaign. This chart contains forward-looking projections which can not be guaranteed.