Israeli automaker Ree Automotive has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with an unnamed “leading technology company” with the tentative goal of deploying thousands of autonomous commercial vehicles by 2030. A definitive collaboration agreement is expected later in 2025, which Ree estimates could generate up to US$770m in revenue.
The prospective collaboration would see Ree leverage its FMVSS-certified P7 skateboard platform and proprietary SoC architecture for use with externally-developed autonomous driving technology. Among the first in the commercial vehicle segment to wholeheartedly embrace zonal architectures and drive-by-wire technology, it has already positioned its platform to integrate easily with autonomous driving technology.
Ree expects to start generating revenue for software and services sometime in H2 2025. Currently, the automaker is sitting on an order backlog worth around US$150 million. Although it has a dedicated integration facility in the UK—which has a large amount of automated assembly equipment on-hand—it is staking its future on licensing its technology out. This would, in effect, allow it to avoid the hefty manufacturing costs that have recently wiped out a number of commercial vehicle start-ups, most notably Nikola.
“We are very excited to see our advanced SDV technology reshaping the future of autonomous transportation at scale as it is being integrated into vehicles and applications outside of REE,” said Daniel Barel, Chief Executive of Ree Automotive, in a statement. “We believe that using our AD-ready and certified P7 platform and our advanced software technology allow us to bring this program to the market swiftly and with minimal investment offering a truly modular, adaptive and cost-effective autonomous solution.”
Barel also told Reuters: “We can break even on the bill of materials level in the lower hundreds and we expect to break even at the EBITDA level in the low thousands. I think this gets us there […] The more we shift from manufacturing of vehicles to software and services revenue, naturally, margins will be of software companies.”
