EV startup Harbinger’s obsession with simplicity is fueling a $100 million Series B round

It’s not an easy time to raise money for an electric vehicle startup, especially considering how many have failed or failed. But Los Angeles-based Harbinger has overcome that by taking a hyper-focused approach to electrifying commercial trucking.

The prize is a $100 million Series B co-led by Tesla’s first investor, Capricorn Investor Group, and Leitmotif, a new US fund co-founded by Volkswagen’s former M&A chief. Also in the round, Tiger Global and mobility venture firm Manivboth were existing investors.

“We know how the EV space is going. We know it’s just full of decades of corpses,” Harbinger CEO John Harris told TechCrunch. “So we really try to keep our coverage 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.”

was created in 2022 by a group of former Canoo and QuantumScape employeesHarbinger has begun developing a modular all-electric chassis for medium-duty trucks.

Then he did… this and that alone.

Harbinger has remained focused at a time when investors are throwing billions at startups that claim they will produce hundreds of thousands of EVs or reshape transportation as we know it. Arrival started in a similar sector as, for example, Harbinger. But as soon as it was released to the public, Arrival claimed to reinvent car manufacturing called microfactoriesplanned to build buses, developed a ride-hailing car with Uber, and became potential even works on a plane.

Arrival is now bankrupt. Meanwhile, the Harbinger has closed the B series and is about to enter production.

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

According to Harris, focusing on one product not only allows his startup to survive, but also helps make the product better.

As an example, Harris pointed to the battery packs that power the Harbinger’s chassis. Instead of packing them in stamped steel that would have to be welded together—and could cause leaks that could damage the batteries—Harbinger invested in a 6,500-ton press that uses high pressures to cast the entire case.

Harbinger was only able to invest in such a specific tool because it didn’t have to spread its costs over many other products, Harris said. The result: battery pack cases that cost only one-twentieth of the normal cost.

Investments like these allowed Harbinger to make its chassis more affordable from the start, rather than relying on mass scale to achieve attractive unit economics.

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

“The segment they’re going after, they don’t change their fleet very often, and when you think about it, they’ve been doing it for several years — and the math is so compelling that it’s inevitable,” Granoff said.

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

“We’ve basically introduced a forced unit economy, and so people like Tiger who wouldn’t normally be in this space (investors) are coming in,” Harris said. “If you ignore Tesla, we have industry-leading unit economics, but I expect we’ll have better margins, probably in 12 to 18 months.”