Autonomous electric freight company Einride will officially partner with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure (MOEI) to bring its dreams to reality. The two signed a memorandum of understanding regarding future plans and goals.
Einride aims to get its fully electric and autonomous fleets out changing the world and grabbing our attention. It will work with the UAE to deploy them over a 550-kilometer area. According to Electrek, the trucking company has been around for seven years and made many transitions, expansions, and moves during that time. For this reason, it's not a surprise it's now looking to the UAE.
The electric freight company hopes that with the help of the UAE, it can encourage a major shift in the trucking industry. If it can launch a large and successful electric fleet and also succeed with autonomous efforts, others will likely buy in and/or follow suit.
The details of the new partnership between Einride and the UAE’s Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure were revealed in an official press release. Essentially, the company will deploy a full ecosystem of electric trucks, autonomous trucks, and EV chargers across the chosen 550 km area. It's actually a grid in the Middle East coined "Falcon Rise."
The memorandum of understanding shows that Einride aims to include a whopping 2,000 electric trucks in the program, in addition to 200 autonomous trucks. To top it off, the company will launch eight EV charging stations in the area, with a total of 500 individual charging points. Electrek learned that the goal is to actually have some 50 charging points at each new station in the Falcon Rise grid.
Einride will develop the ecosystem grid using the current grid system, which is already set up across Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Sharjah. Einride founder and CEO Robert Falck shared:
"This collaboration gets to the core of what Einride provides – the transformation to effective and sustainable shipping that is fully electric. By partnering on this deal, we’ll be able to showcase how entire regions are able to make the switch in an intelligent and cost-effective way."
The chosen grid space will be best suited for simplifying trucking industry logistics in the UAE with the goal of reducing emissions. United Arab Emirates MOEI undersecretary for energy and petroleum affairs, HE. Sharif Alolama added that launching the UAE Falcon Rise grid will mark a major milestone in the push for more sustainable and intelligent transportation. Development and implementation efforts will be carried out over the next five years.
