Autonomous Driving Truck Maker Plus to go Public With SPAC Deal
The deal was set at $3.3 bln with the blank-check company.

The autonomous driving truck maker start-up, Plus announced that they are going public with Blank-check company.

Raising the funds

Only a month back, the company announced that they raised an extra $220 million in addition to their original funding round in February. Additionally, the initial funding this year was about $200 million. 

By the time the extra funding was announced,  there were talks about the start-up going public through SPAC. Most recently, many startups related to future tech have been going public in the same way. 

Furthermore, the company received additional funding from FountainVest Partners and ClearVue Partners. Also included different other companies like Millennium Technology and Quanta Computer Inc. By then they had a couple of investors, Full Truck Alliance, SAIC Motor, and Sequoia Capital.

Already has 10,000 pre-orders

As the company announced in March that their vehicle platform is to be built on Nvidia Drive Orin. They also announced that there were already more than 10,000 pre-orders. 

As the alliance was happening, Nvidia said,

“This software-defined system will continuously improve upon the safety and efficiency of the delivery and logistics industry with High performance compute and AI algorithms that can be updated over the air.” 

Unlike regular electric vehicles, the trucks need an 80,000 pounds trailer. As the company is progressing with the manufacturing facilities, Plus is set to manufacture safe and optimized self-driving trucks. 

Plus is using LiDAR cameras and radar to attain a 360-view. Then the gained data is used to identify objects and proceed accordingly. 

Going public

With a $3.3 billion deal, the company went public through a merger with the Blank-check company. Furthermore, the proceeds of $500 million will be relieved by Plus. Which includes a private investment of $150 million. 

PlusDrive was founded in 2016, they have developed an autonomous software system that can be installed in heavy trucks. This system is to be added while manufacturing the trucks. 

Finally, the company is set to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange as “PLAV” by Q3 this year.