Business
A Decade-Long Search for a Battery That Can End the Gasoline Era
On a frigid day in early January, as she worked in her office in the Boston suburb of Billerica, Mass., Siyu Huang received a two-word text message.
“Spinning wheels,” it said. Attached was a short video clip showing a car on rollers in an indoor testing center.
To the untrained eye there was nothing remarkable in the video. The car could have been getting its emissions tested at a Connecticut auto repair shop (except it had no tailpipe). But to Ms. Huang, the chief executive of Factorial Energy, the video was a milestone in a quest that had already occupied a decade of her life.
Ms. Huang, her husband, Alex Yu, and their employees at Factorial had been working on a new kind of electric vehicle battery, known as solid state, that could turn the auto industry on its head in a few years — if a daunting number of technical challenges could be overcome.
For Ms. Huang and her company, the battery had the potential to change the way consumers think about electric vehicles, give the United States and Europe a leg up on China, and help save the planet.
Factorial is one of dozens of companies trying to invent batteries that can charge faster, go farther, and make electric cars cheaper and more convenient than gasoline vehicles. Transportation is the biggest source of man-made greenhouse gases, and electric vehicles could be a potent weapon against climate change and urban air pollution.
The video that landed in Ms. Huang’s phone was from Uwe Keller, the head of battery development at Mercedes-Benz, which had been supporting Factorial’s research with money and expertise.
The short clip, of a Mercedes sedan at a research lab near Stuttgart, Germany, signaled that the company had installed Factorial’s battery in a car — and that it could actually make the wheels move.
The test was an important step forward in a journey that had begun while Ms. Huang and Mr. Yu were still graduate students at Cornell University. Until then, all their work had been in laboratories. Ms. Huang was excited that their invention was venturing into the world.
But there was still a long way to go. The Mercedes with a Factorial battery hadn’t yet been taken out on the road. That was the only place the technology really mattered.
Many start-ups have produced solid-state battery prototypes. But no American or European carmaker has put one into a production vehicle and proved that the technology could survive the bumps, vibrations and moisture of the streets. Or if any have, they have kept it a secret.
In late 2023, Mr. Keller, a veteran Mercedes engineer, proposed to Ms. Huang that they try.
“We’re car guys,” Mr. Keller said later. “We believe in things really moving.”
Roots in China
Ms. Huang stands out in a niche dominated by men from Silicon Valley. Some brag about their 100-hour workweeks; she believes in a good night’s sleep. “Having a clear mind to make the right decision is more important than how many hours you work,” she said.
She is approachable and laughs easily, but also projects determination. She works from a sparsely decorated office in Billerica that looks out on a patch of forest crossed by power lines. The furnishings include a plain black bookcase, stocked with a few technical volumes, that she inherited from a previous tenant. Her diplomas from Cornell — a Ph.D. in chemistry and a master’s in business administration — hang on the wall.
Ms. Huang grew up in Nanjing, China, where she was in an elementary school program that had her gather environmental data. The program instilled an interest in chemistry and an awareness of the vehicle exhaust and industrial pollution choking Nanjing’s air. She realized, she recalled, that “we need to grow a planet that’s healthier for human beings.”
In a dormitory at Xiamen University on China’s southern coast, where she studied chemistry, she saw an advertisement for a Swedish exchange program. After spending two years there, she and Alex, whom she had known since they were students in China, were both accepted to doctoral programs in Cornell’s chemistry department. She arrived in Ithaca, N.Y., in 2009 with $3,000, which she had managed to save from her Swedish scholarship. They have both since become U.S. citizens.
They were star students, said Héctor Abruña, a professor at Cornell known for his research in electrochemistry. He still has a picture on his office bookshelf of himself with Mr. Yu and Ms. Huang in their commencement robes.
With an idea that grew out of Dr. Abruña’s lab and some seed money from the State of New York, Mr. Yu and Ms. Huang founded the company that later became Factorial while she was still completing her business degree.
“They are extremely dedicated and extremely bright,” said Dr. Abruña, who continues to advise Factorial. “Straight shooters — zero BS.”
Mr. Yu is now Factorial’s chief technology officer. The company is, in that sense, a family operation. Ms. Huang is reticent about their private life, declining to say even how many children they have.
Initially the company focused on improving the materials that allow batteries to store energy. That changed after Mercedes invested in Factorial in 2021. Mercedes was looking for a bigger technological leap and encouraged Factorial to pursue solid state.
The technology has that name because it eliminates the liquid chemical mixture, known as an electrolyte, that helps transport energy-laden ions inside a battery. Liquid electrolytes are highly flammable. Replacing them with a solid or gelatinlike electrolyte makes batteries safer.
A battery that doesn’t overheat can be charged faster, perhaps in as little time as it takes to fill a car with gasoline. And solid-state batteries pack more energy into a smaller space, reducing weight and increasing range.
But solid-state batteries have one big drawback that explains why you can’t buy a car with one today. Such battery cells are more prone to grow spiky irregularities that cause short circuits. Vast riches await any company that can overcome this problem and develop a battery that is durable, safe and reasonably easy to manufacture.
Despite obvious differences between Factorial and Mercedes — the start-up has a little more than 100 employees, compared with 175,000 — Ms. Huang’s working style meshed with the culture at Mercedes and its roots in Swabia, the region around Stuttgart where people are known for their no-nonsense approach and restraint.
Mr. Keller found Ms. Huang’s low-key, factual manner to be a welcome contrast to the hype and unfulfilled promises that are pervasive in the battery and technology industries. Factorial, he said, “has not been announcing, announcing, announcing and not delivering.”
‘Production hell’
It’s an axiom in the battery business that producing a cool prototype is the easy part. The challenge is figuring out how to make millions of solid-state batteries at a reasonable price.
Factorial confronted that problem in 2022, setting up a small pilot factory in Cheonan, South Korea, a city near Seoul known for its tech industry. The project became, in Ms. Huang’s words, “production hell” — the same phrase Elon Musk used when Tesla was struggling to mass-produce a sedan and nearly went bankrupt.
To make money, a battery factory can’t produce too many defective cells. Ideally the yield, the percentage of usable cells, should be at least 95 percent. Hitting that target is devilishly difficult, involving volatile chemicals and fragile separators layered and packaged into cells with zero margin for error. The machinery doing all this is encased in Plexiglas chambers and overseen by workers dressed in head-to-toe protective gear to prevent contamination.
Dozens of companies are trying to mass-produce solid-state cells, including big carmakers like Toyota and smaller ones like QuantumScape, a Silicon Valley start-up backed by Volkswagen. Mercedes, hedging its bets, is also working with ProLogium, a Taiwanese company.
Nio, a Chinese carmaker, sells a vehicle with what it advertises as a solid-state battery. Analysts say the technology is less advanced than what Factorial is developing, offering fewer advantages in weight and performance. But there is little doubt that Chinese companies are investing heavily in solid state. Nio did not respond to a request for comment.
Every company has its own closely guarded recipes and manufacturing processes. “It’s difficult to say which technology will win,” said Xiaoxi He, a technology analyst at IDTechEx, a research firm.
Partly because solid-state batteries are so difficult to manufacture, many auto executives are skeptical that they will make commercial sense anytime soon. Shares in many solid-state battery start-ups have plunged, and management turmoil is common.
Factorial has insulated itself from the harsh judgments of Wall Street by never selling stock. Its funding comes from private investors including WAVE Equity Partners, a Boston firm, and partners that include the South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor; and Stellantis, which next year plans to test Factorial batteries in Dodge Charger muscle cars. It also has a partnership with LG Chem, a South Korean company that makes battery materials.
Projections of how soon solid-state batteries would be available have proved overly optimistic. Toyota displayed a futuristic prototype in 2020, but the company is still years away from selling a car with a solid-state battery.
Kurt Kelty, a vice president at General Motors in charge of batteries, is among those who will believe it when they see it. “We’re not banking on solid state,” Mr. Kelty said.
‘I don’t even know if we can make it’
In the beginning, Factorial’s prototype assembly line in South Korea had a yield of just 10 percent, meaning 90 percent of its batteries were faulty. Despite her preference for a good night’s sleep, Ms. Huang often had to wake up at 4 a.m. to deal with problems at the factory, which was operating around the clock. She was in South Korea at least once a month.
“There were always issues,” she said. “There was a point, I was like, I don’t even know if we can make it.”
By 2023, Factorial had produced enough cells suitable for an automobile that Mr. Keller, a soft-spoken, amiable man who has worked at Mercedes for 25 years, began thinking about installing them in a car. The cost and the risk of failure were high enough that he sought approval from his bosses. Armed with PowerPoint slides, Mr. Keller went to Ola Källenius, an imposing Swede who is chief executive at Mercedes.
Mr. Källenius’s office is at the top of a glass and steel high-rise in the middle of a sprawling manufacturing and development complex beside the Neckar River in Stuttgart.
Mr. Keller argued that road testing would help determine, among other things, whether the batteries would work with air cooling alone. If so, that would eliminate the need for a heavier, more costly liquid-cooled system.
Mr. Källenius signed off on the project, reasoning that a tangible goal would motivate the team and hasten development. He drew an analogy to Formula 1 racing. “If you’re chasing the leader, and suddenly you can see him, you get faster,” Mr. Källenius recalled.
Ms. Huang was a bit surprised when, in late 2023, Mr. Keller told her that Mercedes wanted to put the cells in a working vehicle. “We didn’t realize it was coming so soon, honestly speaking,” she said with a laugh.
But by June 2024, Factorial had managed to produce enough high-quality cells to announce that it had begun delivering them to Mercedes. In November, the factory in South Korea hit 85 percent yield, the best result yet. Ms. Huang and the Korean team celebrated by going out to a barbecue joint.
Mercedes still had to figure out how to package the cells in a way that would protect them from highway dirt and moisture. And it had to integrate the battery pack into a vehicle, connecting it to the car’s control systems.
The Factorial cells had one big drawback that made them hard to install in a car. They expanded when charged and shrank when discharged. In Mr. Keller’s words, they “breathed.”
Mr. Keller turned to engineers on the Mercedes Formula 1 racing team, who are accustomed to quickly solving technical problems. They devised a mechanism that expanded and shrank with the cells, maintaining constant pressure.
By Christmas 2024, a team working at Mercedes’s main research center in Sindelfingen, outside Stuttgart, texted Mr. Keller those two words: “spinning wheels.”
‘Finally I see you’
Mr. Keller confessed that he got a little emotional when his team sent him the video of the car. He waited until after Christmas to forward it to Ms. Huang with the same two words.
Several weeks later, the Mercedes engineers took the car with Factorial’s battery, an otherwise standard EQS electric sedan, to a company track for its first road test.
The engineers drove the car slowly at first. They carefully monitored technical data displayed on the dashboard screen.
They drove faster and faster until, by the fourth day, they reached autobahn speeds of 100 miles per hour. The battery didn’t blow up. In theory, it can power the car for 600 miles, more than most conventional cars can travel on a tank of gasoline.
Mr. Keller had been keeping Ms. Huang apprised of the progress, but she was still surprised when, during a meeting on marketing strategy in February, people from the Mercedes communications department mentioned that they had written a news release announcing the achievement.
“Do you want to take a look?” they asked.
She certainly did. The first successful road test with a Factorial battery was an enormously important moment, one they had been anticipating for years. Yet the teams at Mercedes and Factorial did not throw parties to celebrate. They still had work to do.
The next step is to equip a fleet of Mercedes vehicles with batteries, perfect the manufacturing process and do the testing required to begin selling them. That will probably take until 2028, at least. Many experts don’t expect cars with solid-state batteries to be widely available until 2030, at the earliest.
In April, Ms. Huang finally found time to travel to Stuttgart and ride in the car herself.
It was a clear spring day, with greenery sprouting in the German countryside and flowers beginning to bloom. Mercedes employees escorted her to a garage in Sindelfingen, where the automaker also has a large factory complex.
Ms. Huang had seen many photos of the car, but she still felt a thrill when the garage doors opened. It felt “like a long-lost friend,” she said. “Like, ‘Finally I see you!’”
A Mercedes driver took her for a spin on the test track, zooming down an asphalt straightaway then around a banked curve that, Ms. Huang said, felt like a roller coaster.
Inside the car, there was no way to perceive the difference with the Factorial battery compared with a conventional one. “But it’s just so special because it’s with our battery.”
Business
Commentary: The Pentagon is demanding to use Claude AI as it pleases. Claude told me that’s ‘dangerous’
Recently, I asked Claude, an artificial-intelligence thingy at the center of a standoff with the Pentagon, if it could be dangerous in the wrong hands.
Say, for example, hands that wanted to put a tight net of surveillance around every American citizen, monitoring our lives in real time to ensure our compliance with government.
“Yes. Honestly, yes,” Claude replied. “I can process and synthesize enormous amounts of information very quickly. That’s great for research. But hooked into surveillance infrastructure, that same capability could be used to monitor, profile and flag people at a scale no human analyst could match. The danger isn’t that I’d want to do that — it’s that I’d be good at it.”
That danger is also imminent.
Claude’s maker, the Silicon Valley company Anthropic, is in a showdown over ethics with the Pentagon. Specifically, Anthropic has said it does not want Claude to be used for either domestic surveillance of Americans, or to handle deadly military operations, such as drone attacks, without human supervision.
Those are two red lines that seem rather reasonable, even to Claude.
However, the Pentagon — specifically Pete Hegseth, our secretary of Defense who prefers the made-up title of secretary of war — has given Anthropic until Friday evening to back off of that position, and allow the military to use Claude for any “lawful” purpose it sees fit.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, center, arrives for the State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday.
(Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images)
The or-else attached to this ultimatum is big. The U.S. government is threatening not just to cut its contract with Anthropic, but to perhaps use a wartime law to force the company to comply or use another legal avenue to prevent any company that does business with the government from also doing business with Anthropic. That might not be a death sentence, but it’s pretty crippling.
Other AI companies, such as white rights’ advocate Elon Musk’s Grok, have already agreed to the Pentagon’s do-as-you-please proposal. The problem is, Claude is the only AI currently cleared for such high-level work. The whole fiasco came to light after our recent raid in Venezuela, when Anthropic reportedly inquired after the fact if another Silicon Valley company involved in the operation, Palantir, had used Claude. It had.
Palantir is known, among other things, for its surveillance technologies and growing association with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s also at the center of an effort by the Trump administration to share government data across departments about individual citizens, effectively breaking down privacy and security barriers that have existed for decades. The company’s founder, the right-wing political heavyweight Peter Thiel, often gives lectures about the Antichrist and is credited with helping JD Vance wiggle into his vice presidential role.
Anthropic’s co-founder, Dario Amodei, could be considered the anti-Thiel. He began Anthropic because he believed that artificial intelligence could be just as dangerous as it could be powerful if we aren’t careful, and wanted a company that would prioritize the careful part.
Again, seems like common sense, but Amodei and Anthropic are the outliers in an industry that has long argued that nearly all safety regulations hamper American efforts to be fastest and best at artificial intelligence (although even they have conceded some to this pressure).
Not long ago, Amodei wrote an essay in which he agreed that AI was beneficial and necessary for democracies, but “we cannot ignore the potential for abuse of these technologies by democratic governments themselves.”
He warned that a few bad actors could have the ability to circumvent safeguards, maybe even laws, which are already eroding in some democracies — not that I’m naming any here.
“We should arm democracies with AI,” he said. “But we should do so carefully and within limits: they are the immune system we need to fight autocracies, but like the immune system, there is some risk of them turning on us and becoming a threat themselves.”
For example, while the 4th Amendment technically bars the government from mass surveillance, it was written before Claude was even imagined in science fiction. Amodei warns that an AI tool like Claude could “conduct massively scaled recordings of all public conversations.” This could be fair game territory for legally recording because law has not kept pace with technology.
Emil Michael, the undersecretary of war, wrote on X Thursday that he agreed mass surveillance was unlawful, and the Department of Defense “would never do it.” But also, “We won’t have any BigTech company decide Americans’ civil liberties.”
Kind of a weird statement, since Amodei is basically on the side of protecting civil rights, which means the Department of Defense is arguing it’s bad for private people and entities to do that? And also, isn’t the Department of Homeland Security already creating some secretive database of immigration protesters? So maybe the worry isn’t that exaggerated?
Help, Claude! Make it make sense.
If that Orwellian logic isn’t alarming enough, I also asked Claude about the other red line Anthropic holds — the possibility of allowing it to run deadly operations without human oversight.
Claude pointed out something chilling. It’s not that it would go rogue, it’s that it would be too efficient and fast.
“If the instructions are ‘identify and target’ and there’s no human checkpoint, the speed and scale at which that could operate is genuinely frightening,” Claude informed me.
Just to top that with a cherry, a recent study found that in war games, AI’s escalated to nuclear options 95% of the time.
I pointed out to Claude that these military decisions are usually made with loyalty to America as the highest priority. Could Claude be trusted to feel that loyalty, the patriotism and purpose, that our human soldiers are guided by?
“I don’t have that,” Claude said, pointing out that it wasn’t “born” in the U.S., doesn’t have a “life” here and doesn’t “have people I love there.” So an American life has no greater value than “a civilian life on the other side of a conflict.”
OK then.
“A country entrusting lethal decisions to a system that doesn’t share its loyalties is taking a profound risk, even if that system is trying to be principled,” Claude added. “The loyalty, accountability and shared identity that humans bring to those decisions is part of what makes them legitimate within a society. I can’t provide that legitimacy. I’m not sure any AI can.”
You know who can provide that legitimacy? Our elected leaders.
It is ludicrous that Amodei and Anthropic are in this position, a complete abdication on the part of our legislative bodies to create rules and regulations that are clearly and urgently needed.
Of course corporations shouldn’t be making the rules of war. But neither should Hegseth. Thursday, Amodei doubled down on his objections, saying that while the company continues to negotiate and wants to work with the Pentagon, “we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.”
Thank goodness Anthropic has the courage and foresight to raise the issue and hold its ground — without its pushback, these capabilities would have been handed to the government with barely a ripple in our conscientiousness and virtually no oversight.
Every senator, every House member, every presidential candidate should be screaming for AI regulation right now, pledging to get it done without regard to party, and demanding the Department of Defense back off its ridiculous threat while the issue is hashed out.
Because when the machine tells us it’s dangerous to trust it, we should believe it.
For the trendiest tenants in Hollywood office buildings, it’s the latest fad that goes way beyond designer furniture and art: mini studios
To capitalize on the never-ending flow of stars and influencers who come through Los Angeles, a growing number of companies are building bright little corners for content creators to try products and shoot short videos. Athletic apparel maker Puma, Kim Kardashian’s Skims and cheeky cosmetics retailer e.l.f. have spaces specifically designed to give people a place to experience and broadcast about their brands.
Hollywood, which hasn’t historically been home to apparel companies, is now attracting the offices of fashion retailers, says CIM Group, one of the neighborhood’s largest commercial property landlords.
“When we’re touring a space, one of the first items they bring up is, ‘Where can I build a studio?’” said Blake Eckert, who leases CIM offices in L.A.
Their studio offices also serve as marketing centers, with showrooms and meeting spaces where brands can host proprietary events not open to the public.
“For companies where brand visibility is really important, there is a trend of creating spaces that don’t just function as offices,” said real estate broker Nicole Mihalka of CBRE, who puts together entertainment property leases and sales.
Puma’s global entertainment marketing team is based in its new Hollywood offices, which works with such musical celebrity partners as Rihanna, ASAP Rocky, Dua Lipa, Skepta and Rosé, said Allyssa Rapp, head of Puma Studio L.A.
Allyssa Rapp, director of entertainment marketing at Puma, is shown in the Puma Studio L.A. The company keeps a closet full of Puma products on hand to give VIP guests. Visits to the studio sanctum are by invitation only, though.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Hollywood is a central location, she said, for meeting with celebrities, stylists and outside designers, most of whom are based in Los Angeles.
The office is a “creation hub,” she said, where influencers can record Puma’s design prototyping lab supported by libraries of materials and equipment used to create Puma apparel. The company, founded in 1948, is known for its emblematic sneakers such as the Speedcat and its lunging feline logo, and makes athletic wear, accessories and equipment.
Puma’s entertainment marketing team also occupies the office and sometimes uses it for exclusive events.
“We use the space as a showroom, as a social space that transforms from a traditional workplace into more of an experiential space,” Rapp said.
Nontraditional uses include content creation, sit-down dinners, product launches, album listening parties and workshops.
“Inviting people into our space and being able to give them high-touch brand experiences is something tangible and important for them,” she said. “The cultural layer is really important for us.”
The company keeps a closet full of Puma products on hand to give VIP guests. Visits to the studio sanctum are by invitation only, though. There’s no retail portal to the exclusive Hollywood offices.
Puma shoes are on display in the Puma Studio L.A.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Puma is also positioning its L.A studio as a connection point for major upcoming sporting events coming to Los Angeles, including the World Cup this summer, the 2027 Super Bowl and 2028 Olympics.
In-office studios don’t need to be big to be impactful, Mihalka said. “These are smaller stages, closer to green screen than a massive soundstage.”
Social media is the key driver of content created by most businesses, which may set up small booth-like stages where influencers can hawk hot products while offering discounts to people watching them perform.
Bigger, elevated stages can accommodate multiple performers for extended discussions in front of small audiences, with towering screens behind them to set the mood or illustrate products.
Among the tricked-out offices, she said, is Skims. The company, which is valued at $5 billion, is based in a glass-and-steel office building near the fabled intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street.
The fashion retailer declined to comment on the studio uses in its headquarters, but according to architecture firm Odaa, it has open and private offices, meeting rooms, collaboration zones, photo studios, sample libraries, prototype showrooms, an executive lounge and a commissary for 400 people.
Pieces of a shoe sit on a workbench in the Puma Studio L.A.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
The brands building studios typically want to find the darkest spot on the premises to put their content creation or podcast spaces, Eckert said, where they can limit outside light and sound. That’s commonly near the center of the office floor, far from windows and close to permanent shear walls that limit sound intrusion.
They also need space for green rooms and restrooms dedicated to the talent.
Spotify recently built a fancy podcast studio in a CIM office building on trendy Sycamore Avenue that is open by invitation-only to video creators in Spotify’s partner program.
“Ambitious shows need spaces that support big ideas,” Bill Simmons, head of talk strategy at Spotify, said in a statement. “These studios give teams room to experiment and keep pushing what’s possible.”
The rolling robots that deliver groceries and hot meals across Los Angeles are getting an upgrade.
Coco Robotics, a UCLA-born startup that’s deployed more than 1,000 bots across the country, unveiled its next-generation machines on Thursday.
The new robots are bigger, tougher and better equipped for autonomy than their predecessors. The company will use them to expand into new markets and increase its presence in Los Angeles, where it makes deliveries through a partnership with DoorDash.
Dubbed Coco 2, the next-gen bots have upgraded cameras and front-facing lidar, a laser-based sensor used in self-driving cars. They will use hardware built by Nvidia, the Santa Clara-based artificial intelligence chip giant.
Coco co-founder and chief executive Zach Rash said Coco 2 will be able to make deliveries even in conditions unsafe for human drivers. The robot is fully submersible in case of flooding and is compatible with special snow tires.
Zach Rash, co-founder and CEO of Coco, opens the top of the new Coco 2 (Next-Gen) at the Coco Robotics headquarters in Venice.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
Early this month, a cute Coco was recorded struggling through flooded roads in L.A.
“She’s doing her best!” said the person recording the video. “She is doing her best, you guys.”
Instagram followers cheered the bot on, with one posting, “Go coco, go,” and others calling for someone to help the robot.
“We want it to have a lot more reliability in the most extreme conditions where it’s either unsafe or uncomfortable for human drivers to be on the road,” Rash said. “Those are the exact times where everyone wants to order.”
The company will ramp up mass production of Coco 2 this summer, Rash said, aiming to produce 1,000 bots each month.
The design is sleek and simple, with a pink-and-white ombré paint job, the company’s name printed in lowercase, and a keypad for loading and unloading the cargo area. The robots have four wheels and a bigger internal compartment for carrying food and goods .
Many of the bots will be used for expansion into new markets across Europe and Asia, but they will also hit the streets in Los Angeles and operate alongside the older Coco bots.
Coco has about 300 bots in Los Angeles already, serving customers from Santa Monica and Venice to Westwood, Mid-City, West Hollywood, Hollywood, Echo Park, Silver Lake, downtown, Koreatown and the USC area.
The new Coco 2 (Next-Gen) drives along the sidewalk at the Coco Robotics headquarters in Venice.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
The company is in discussion with officials in Culver City, Long Beach and Pasadena about bringing autonomous delivery to those communities.
There’s also been demand for the bots in Studio City, Burbank and the San Fernando Valley, according to Rash.
“A lot of the markets that we go into have been telling us they can’t hire enough people to do the deliveries and to continue to grow at the pace that customers want,” Rash said. “There’s quite a lot of area in Los Angeles that we can still cover.”
The bots already operate in Chicago, Miami and Helsinki, Finland. Last month, they arrived in Jersey City, N.J.
Late last year, Coco announced a partnership with DashMart, DoorDash’s delivery-only online store. The partnership allows Coco bots to deliver fresh groceries, electronics and household essentials as well as hot prepared meals.
With the release of Coco 2, the company is eyeing faster deliveries using bike lanes and road shoulders as opposed to just sidewalks, in cities where it’s safe to do so. Coco 2 can adapt more quickly to new environments and physical obstacles, the company said.
Zach Rash, co-founder and CEO of Coco.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
Coco 2 is designed to operate autonomously, but there will still be human oversight in case the robot runs into trouble, Rash said. Damaged sidewalks or unexpected construction can stop a bot in its tracks.
The need for human supervision has created a new field of jobs for Angelenos.
Though there have been reports of pedestrians bullying the robots by knocking them over or blocking their path, Rash said the community response has been overall positive. The bots are meant to inspire affection.
“One of the design principles on the color and the name and a lot of the branding was to feel warm and friendly to people,” Rash said.
Coco plans to add thousands of bots to its fleet this year. The delivery service got its start as a dorm room project in 2020, when Rash was a student at UCLA. He co-founded the company with fellow student Brad Squicciarini.
The Santa Monica-based company has completed more than 500,000 zero-emission deliveries and its bots have collectively traveled around 1 million miles.
Coco chooses neighborhoods to deploy its bots based on density, prioritizing areas with restaurants clustered together and short delivery distances as well as places where parking is difficult.
The robots can relieve congestion by taking cars and motorbikes off the roads. Rash said there is so much demand for delivery services that the company’s bots are not taking jobs from human drivers.
Instead, Coco can fill gaps in the delivery market while saving merchants money and improving the safety of city streets.
“This vehicle is inherently a lot safer for communities than a car,” Rash said. “We believe our vehicles can operate the highest quality of service and we can do it at the lowest price point.”
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