Autonomous EV developer Humble Robotics adds $51M to expand

Humble Robotics secured $51 million in new financing, bringing the autonomous electric vehicle developer’s total funding to $75 million less than a year after its founding. Obvious Ventures led the Series A round, with participation from existing investors Eclipse, Energy Impact Partners and others. Humble said it will use the funding for customer pilots, testing and validation, early manufacturing, and expansion of its modular platform into a broader family of regional freight vehicles. “We’ve spent years proving that a truck can drive itself. The harder question is how to make autonomy something a freight operator can depend on every day,” founder and CEO Eyal Cohen said. PERSPECTIVE: From proving autonomy works to proving it scales The financing comes six months after the San Francisco-based company emerged from stealth with the Humble Hauler, a battery-electric, cabless Class 8 autonomous vehicle. Humble previously raised $24 million in seed funding led by Eclipse. Cohen, a former Apple, Otto, Uber and Waabi executive, took his vision for the vehicle from concept to prototype in six months. He told Transport Topics in May that Humble expected to complete testing and begin a customer pilot involving dock-to-dock transportation of 40-foot shipping containers within 12 months of the interview. The company plans to adapt the design for 53-foot dry van and refrigerated trailers. “It’s an interesting question of ‘How do you rethink this but how do you also plug into a well-oiled machine?’ ” Cohen said in the May interview, referring to the freight industry. “When we were working on this project, the goal was ‘How do…

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