Industry Electric vehicles Website motivps.com | Founder Jim Castelaz Founded 2009 | |
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Headquarters Foster City, California, United States of America | ||
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Motiv Power Systems is a manufacturer of all-electric powertrain control systems for commercial vehicles, based in Foster City, California. They also produce software for the systems, and install them in vehicles that have already been manufactured.
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History
Jim Castelaz founded Motiv in 2009, working from his residence in Mountain View.
In 2012, the company won a grant from the California Energy Commission to research and build a prototype manufacturing facility for its powertrain system, with a stated goal to "de-risk" the process of converting vehicles to an all-electric system.
Motiv's first major contract was with the city of Chicago to convert twenty garbage trucks to use only electric power, starting work in 2012, with the first truck deployed in the middle of 2014. Motiv estimates that Chicago could prevent the release of 10,000 tons of carbon emissions per year by converting one quarter of its garbage trucks in this manner. Chicago paid for the trucks on a sliding scale, with the sale of the first trucks at $1.3 million, and the final ten trucks at $500,000.
Then, in 2013, Motiv partnered with New York company Trans Tech to create an electric school bus for the Kings Canyon Unified School District, which went into service in March of 2014. The school district paid Motiv $230,000 for two "SST-e" Type A buses, with two more to follow. The buses can travel 80-100 miles, and carry 18-25 students each.
Motiv also worked with Google in early 2015 to fund electric shuttles in Mountain View, based on existing vehicle designs.
Then, in 2016, Motiv partnered with California Truck Equipment Co. and Rockport Commercial Vehicles to offer all-electric work trucks and box trucks, respectively. The first all-electric CTEC work truck was delivered to Santa Ana that year.