Amazon will buy thousands of pedal-assist cargo vehicles from Rivian spinoff Also

Summary

Also, the micromobility startup spun out of Rivian, has landed a commercial deal with Amazon to supply the e-commerce company with thousands of its new pedal-assist cargo quad vehicles that are big enough to carry more than 400 pounds of packages and small enough to use a bike lane. Under the multi-year collaboration, the two companies will work on customizing the pedal-assist vehicles to meet Amazon’s delivery needs in Europe and the United States. The TM-Q pedal-assist electric quads will launch in 2026, according to Also, which revealed the Wednesday at an event in Oakland alongside the company’s new ebike called the TM-B. While Also is a new company, its executives already have a long-held relationship with Amazon. Rivian, the EV maker where Also was born, is backed by Amazon and has supplied the company with more than 25,000 of its electric delivery vans. “We really understand how to work with each other,” Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe told TechCrunch ahead of the event, adding that everything they learned from the EDV van program was poured into this project. “This is where having Rivian as a large shareholder is very handy because we can do all this tight coordination through one fleet management portal that manages your large vehicles, like the EDV vans, and the Also products.” The advantage is knowing exactly what Amazon needs, Scaringe added. “There’s no guesswork and Also has benefited from a lot of input from the Rivian team, which has been involved, because they’re so close to Amazon. Also started as a skunkworks within Rivian and spun out of the EV maker earlier this year with a new name and $105 million in funding from Eclipse Ventures. Also is a standalone company, but it has close ties with Rivian, which holds a minority stake. Scaringe will serve on its board, and Also will use — and already has — the automaker’s tech, retail presence, and economies of scale. Image Credits:Kirsten Korosec The TM-Q and Also’s TM-B ebike share much of the same D...