Mitsubishi backs Ample’s radical approach to charging EV batteries

Startup Ample is on a mission to convert commercial fleets into believers in the power of electric vehicle battery swapping technology.  

The company has spent the last three years piloting its electric vehicle battery swapping technology in San Francisco, Madrid, and Japan. Now, Ample is preparing to turn some of those pilot customers into commercial contracts in 2025. 

And to help Ample along is a fresh $25 million in funding from new investor Mitsubishi Corporation. 

The raise seems modest in comparison to Ample’s previous investment. In 2021, the year of free-flowing cash, Ample managed to raise a total of $190 million over two separate rounds. Ample co-founder and president John de Souza told TechCrunch this raise is the first close of what will hopefully be a $75 million round.

Ample provides commercial fleets with swappable battery packs and automated battery swapping stations. De Souza says the fresh funds will help the startup scale from tens of swapping stations and a few hundred Ample-equipped vehicles on public roads today to hundreds of stations and thousands of vehicles in the next year. 

Perhaps of equal importance to the cash is Ample’s partnership with Mitsubishi Corp. — not to be confused with Mitsubishi Motors. Mitsubishi Corp. has ownership stakes in commercial fleets interested in electrification, including Lawson, a popular Japanese convenience store. The conglomerate also has a clean energy division that can help Ample access renewable energy for its swapping stations, said de Souza. 

Ample’s first pilot-turned-customer will be Free2Move, a carsharing service owned by automaker Stellantis. Free2Move operates all-electric Fiat 500es in Madrid that are equipped with Ample’s battery swapping technology. De Souza anticipates expanding Ample’s presence in Madrid into ridesharing and last-mile delivery markets soon. That could look similar to Ample’s previous partnership with Drive Sally, which provides battery swappable Kia Niros to Uber drivers in San Francisco. 

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Ample will announce its commercial customers in Japan in the coming weeks, which the company says will include customers from its pilot in Kyoto. Earlier this year, Ample deployed its first battery swapping stations in the city as part of a partnership with Japanese energy company ENEOS. Several fleet partners use the stations, including MK Taxi, Kyoto City, and Kyoto Prefecture, and Nippon Life Insurance Company. 

Ample, which is based in San Francisco, is prioritizing initial commercial deployments in Europe and Japan given the uncertainty surrounding EV legislation in the U.S. with the incoming Trump administration, de Souza said. 

Although, de Souza sees a potential avenue to commercialization in the U.S. if the subsidies remain as they are. 

“We need to understand what the implications are in terms of having Chinese batteries in the U.S., because we can allow [automakers] very quickly to switch those out…to a place that has a free trade agreement with the U.S.,” de Souza said, noting that Ample’s modular batteries are made with South Korean cylindrical cells and assembled in a California facility. The startup’s pitch to OEMs is that it can simply drop its batteries into EVs on the factory floor without disturbing the production line.

“We’ll see what the actual legislation turns out to be and then we can understand how we work with OEMs to go through and make sure they’re in compliance,” de Souza said.