EV startup Harbinger’s obsession with simplicity fuels $100M Series B

It’s not an easy time to raise money for an electric vehicle startup, especially given how many have failed or are close to failing. But based in Los Angeles Precursor he pulled out by taking a hyper-focused approach to electrifying commercial trucks.

The reward is a $100 million Series B, co-led by early Tesla investor Capricorn Investment Group and Leitmotif, a new US fund co-founded by the former head of M&A for Volkswagen. They also join in turn Tiger Global and mobility company Manivboth of whom were existing investors.

“We know how the EV space has gone. We know it’s just scattered bodies from the past decade,” Harbinger CEO John Harris told TechCrunch in an interview. “So we really, really, try to keep our goal very focused and we have very high confidence in what we say we’re going to do before we say we’re going to do it.”

Founded in 2022 by a group of former Canoo and QuantumScape employeesHarbinger set out to make an all-electric modular chassis for medium trucks.

So… he did this, and only this.

Harbinger maintained its focus at a time when investors were throwing billions of dollars at startups that claimed they would make hundreds of thousands of EVs, or reshape transportation as we know it. Arrival, for example, began in a similar setting to Harbinger. But as it became public, Arrival stated that it will reinvent the manufacturing of vehicles with so-called micro-factoriesplanned to make buses, developed a ride-hail car with Uber, and it was potentially even work on an airplane.

Arrival is now failing. Harbinger, meanwhile, has closed a Series B and is about to enter production.

“Harbinger is just this fantastic team of very experienced operators, with a lot of scars and relevant experience from their previous roles,” Leitmotif co-founder Jens Wiese, the former VW exec, said in an interview. “They’re just laser-focused on this segment and getting the product right.”

Harris said focusing on a product not only allowed his startup to survive, but helped make the product better.

For example, Harris pointed to the battery packs that power the Harbinger’s chassis. Instead of packing in stamped steel, which must be welded together – and can lead to leaks that damage the batteries – Harbinger invested in a 6,500-ton press that uses high pressures to die the entire case.

Harris said Harbinger was only able to invest in such a specialized tool because it didn’t need to spread its spending over several other products. The result: battery locks that are only one twentieth of the normal cost.

Investments like this have allowed Harbinger to make their chassis more affordable from the start, rather than relying on massive scale to achieve attractive unit economics.

And since Harbinger primarily sells to CFOs of fleet companies, Maniv managing partner Michael Granoff said it’s an enticing proposition.

“The segment they follow, they don’t replace their fleets that often, and when they think about it, they do it for many years – and the math becomes so compelling that it’s just inevitable,” Granoff said.

Granoff believes so strongly in Harbinger’s opportunity that his firm has invested more in the startup than any other company. Harbinger’s Series B is also the only investment round that Maniv’s second fund has joined that the firm did not lead.

“We’ve basically provided compelling unit economics already, and that’s why people who normally wouldn’t be in this space, (investors) like Tiger are coming in,” Harris said. “We have industry-leading unit economics, if you ignore Tesla, but we expect we’ll have a better margin than them, probably in another 12 to 18 months.”