Pangea Motors, the tiny, Vancouver-based electric bus maker with ambitions to improve public transportation in congested cities, will be part of a research-and-development project for low-cost electrical vehicle fleets that will take place at a new Portland technology incubator operated by the British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover.
This new partnership between the innovation incubator and technology innovation startup urban.systems, which was chosen for the project by Jaguar Land Rover, will include six months of staff support and mentorship by the incubator staff, as well as financial assistance. Among urban.systems’s first projects will be products and services for the management of multi-passenger electric vehicle fleets.
Pangea Motors was not named in Tuesday’s official announcement by the Jaguar Land Rover incubator, but its work was selected by urban.systems as its first project. On Thursday, Pangea Motors announced that urban.systems, which has Pangea CEO Ken Montler as one of its four leaders, has selected management of multi-passenger electric vehicle fleets as one of its first projects.
Jaguar Land Rover said in its initial announcement, released at the Consumer Telematics Show in Las Vegas, that urban.systems “will focus its efforts on low-cost, scalable infrastructure technologies that leverage open-data, open-source technology and community-based urban planning.” Pangea says that research is aimed at refining its pilot project in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Pangea’s goal is to launch its open-software electric vehicle service, with ten 16-passenger buses, in that city in the first half of this year, .
