Ridgeline Founder Stories: John Harris of EV startup Harbinger aims to decarbonize medium-duty trucking
Electric passenger cars are on the rise, but what about trucks and other delivery vehicles? Although there’s been an industrywide move toward electric vehicles, medium-duty trucks have been somewhat missed, and electrifying them will be a step forward into the future of transportation and lowering carbon emissions.
Instead of scrapping existing trucks, electric vehicle (EV) startup Harbinger is aiming to electrify them with its two EV platforms that upfit into medium-duty box trucks, tow trucks, and similarly sized delivery vehicles. Ridgeline first invested in Harbinger—previously known as Electron Transport—back in December 2021. In September of this year, Harbinger announced the unveiling of a first-of-its-kind commercial medium-duty platform set to electrify and revolutionize the industry, which was covered by CNBC and Forbes.
Harbinger’s co-founder and CEO John Harris saw the opportunity to make a big impact by solving medium duty electrification quickly and efficiently. We asked him to answer some questions about his journey and predictions for the future of transportation and of Harbinger.
How did you become interested in electric vehicles?
JH: I've been a car enthusiast for a long time. I was on a FSAE team during college, and it always seemed natural to me to find an opportunity to work on vehicles in my career. In legacy internal combustion engine (ICE) automotive businesses today, you're really grinding away to gain another 0.1% efficiency gain or one more ounce of weight savings, but in electrification, there are whole segments of the industry where almost no meaningful engineering has been done, so the opportunities to make huge impacts are really incomparable.
What inspired you to co-found a company?
JH: My co-founders and I knew exactly which problem we wanted to solve (medium duty electrification), because we believe that the technology potential and the market need are unusually well aligned. When we looked around the market, meaning both at startups and legacy OEMs, we didn't see any companies that were willing to attack the problem with what we believe to be the necessary level of commitment and investment; specifically no one was investing the effort to build a brand new electrified platform for medium duty. Given our previous experience building startups and our conviction that this is the right market, that led us to start a new company specifically to solve this problem.
Tell us about your team: Who’s on it, and how did you meet?
JH: There are three of us on the founding team. Myself and Will Eberts (our COO) both started working at Faraday Future on the same day, working on Phil Weicker (CTO)'s team. The three of us worked together for a while at Faraday Future, then Phil and Will worked together at Canoo (where Phil is also a co-founder), then Will and I worked together at Anduril. So we've all been in the trenches with each other in a variety of previous roles, and that allows us to work very quickly and efficiently together here at Harbinger.
Almost every person on the broader Harbinger team fits into one or more of those previous companies as well, and that really is the secret to being able to execute this quickly together.
Where do you see transportation headed in the future?
JH: I see transportation rapidly moving to an almost entirely electric future. The vast majority of passenger car uses today are easily supported by electrification, as well as perhaps 90% of the use cases of medium duty vehicles, Harbinger's focus area. But I also see significant growth opportunities for Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), which is both more economically viable for long haul trucking than battery propulsion, and significantly cleaner than diesel.
“...in electrification, there are whole segments of the industry where almost no meaningful engineering has been done, so the opportunities to make huge impacts are really incomparable.”
What does success look like to Harbinger in the short term and long term?
JH: In the near term, we're focused on executing Alpha vehicle testing and moving into our Beta execution phase. In the long term, success to us is seeing every delivery, short haul, and vocational truck on the road replaced with an electric vehicle. Not all of those vehicles can or will come from Harbinger; this is a massive, completely untapped market, and there is more than enough room for multiple companies to successfully decarbonize medium duty trucking.
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