General Motors-owned BrightDrop is in a rapid expansion as some of the world’s largest companies — such as Walmart, Hertz, FedEx and Verizon — have started ordering its electric delivery vehicles and other delivery software products.
BrightDrop told investors Thursday that it is on pace to reach $1 billion in revenue in 2023. It is also set to generate up to $10 billion in revenue and 20% profit margins by the end of the decade. It says it is one of the fastest companies to hit the $1 billion milestone.
“We’re a tech startup with a subscription-based product offering that’s backed by a global powerhouse — this puts us in a league of our own,” said BrightDrop CEO Travis Katz in a statement. “As we focus not only on electric vans, but also eCarts and software, we’re confident that our full ecosystem of connected products and services will drive significant revenue and growth for years to come.”
Adding to BrightDrop’s coffers is its recent expansion into the online grocery sector, Katz said, where “we can capture substantial market share across multiple industries.”
On Thursday, BrightDrop also said it is hiring to help facilitate future growth and jobs can be found at www.gobrightdrop.com. The company also unveiled a new product called BrightDrop Core. It is a subscription-based software platform designed to help customers better optimize their business.
In September, BrightDrop introduced another new product called the Trace Grocery. It’s a temperature-controlled electric cart to help ease order fulfillment and customer pickup for online groceries by eliminating steps in the process. BrightDrop’s first customer will be grocery-giant Kroger, which will start using the cart in its e-commerce operations later this year.
BrightDrop, which GM started in early 2021, offers two commercial electric delivery vehicles — the Zevo 600, which resembles the big brown UPS-style truck, and a smaller Zevo 400 midsize truck. They will be built at GM’s CAMI Assembly plant in Ingersol, Canada, which opens this quarter. Katz has said BrightDrop expects to be making 50,000 trucks a year there starting in 2025.
BrightDrop also offers the Trace eCart, formerly called the EP1, an electrically-powered pallet that helps move packages to ease the burden on workers’ bodies, and mobile asset management for the Trace. That’s software to provide location monitoring, battery status, remote commands to lock and unlock, and over-the-air updates of connected features.
The newest product, BrightDrop Core, is software that combines data generated from the Zevo and Trace products to provide customers with better visibility, insight and control of their operations. BrightDrop Core will be available early next year with an initial offering that includes a user portal, mobile productivity apps and digital driver experience to help improve driver efficiency in the field.
BrightDrop has received over 25,000 reservations for its EV vans and letters of intent from companies and already has vehicles on the road making deliveries.
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Contact Jamie L. LaReau: jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.