Singapore's Innovative Refrigerated Trucks Target Lucrative Chinese EV Industry

In a bold move that could potentially reshape the electric vehicle (EV) market in China, a Singaporean startup is making waves with its innovative approach to refrigerated trucks.

A Singapore-based business is anticipated to gain an advantage in the congested Chinese electric vehicle (EV) industry by developing fully electric refrigerated trucks for carrying food and pharmaceuticals.

Singauto Technology will debut its first EV cold storage truck model and discuss pricing at an event in Beijing. Adding that the company has closed an initial funding round of $20 million from investors.

A feasible cold storage electric truck might be a lucrative niche for Singauto within the world's largest EV market. Internal combustion vehicles dominate the cold-chain logistics business, in part because refrigerating the cargo consumes so much electricity from the battery that the range of electric equivalents may be limited.

The limitation has hindered cold-chain fleet owners' adoption of pure electric vehicles, however automakers such as Geely and Toyota offer hybrid models and hydrogen-powered trucks as alternatives.

Singauto, on the other hand, believes that as China's hyper-competitive EV industry becomes more efficient, the company will be able to develop its refrigerated trucks in less time and that favourable policies such as restrictions on internal combustion engine trucks in major cities will spur demand for pure electric vehicles.

As per the reports, the company already has 20,000 pre-orders for its new truck, the S1, including from Qingdao Linking Fresh Supplying Chain, and plans to target the small but rapidly increasing EV sector in Southeast Asia.

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According to the company, the S1 would contain an 85-kilowatt-hour battery supplied by China's CATL, the world's largest battery maker, designed to give 270 km (168 miles) of range when fully loaded.

Singauto may become profitable with sales of 30,000 trucks, in part because the vehicle's design, engineering, and manufacture have been outsourced.

Shanghai Launch Automotive Technology, also known as Launch Design, designed and will obtain components for the S1, as well as produce the vehicle and future planned variants, including a smaller EV delivery van.

According to Launch Design CEO Wang Xun, while legacy automakers require two or three years to create a new vehicle from the ground up, China's EV industry has managed to reduce that time to between 15 and 18 months, including for the S1.

"The key to this industry is speed. It's no longer about big fish eating small fish, but about fast fish eating slow fish," Wang told in a interview last month.

LSingauto's concentration on a specific area in cold-chain logistics puts it in a better competitive position than China's mass-market EV makers, who have been involved in a price war this year, sapping earnings.

Singauto's backers include Singapore-based investment firm Cynergy Global Investment (CGI) and TuSimple, a publicly traded corporation in the United States with ties to China that has been restructuring to focus on autonomous drive systems for commercial vehicles in Asia.

In conclusion, Singauto Technology’s entrance into the Chinese EV market with its innovative electric refrigerated trucks is a promising development. If successful, it could not only provide a sustainable alternative to traditional diesel-powered trucks but also help reduce pollution and carbon emissions in the fast-growing Chinese logistics sector.