A bang for the logistics industry's buck: on April 1, automated logistics provider Fernride presents a prominent new addition. Holger Mandel, former member of the Executive Board of MAN Truck & Bus SE & CEO of MAN Truck & Bus Germany, will actively support the Munich-based startup as a board member and investor. Nothing less than the development of the autonomous future of mobility and the transition to automated and sustainable logistics through teleoperated driving is the mission of Fernride GmbH. Just recently, the company, together with renowned partners such as Bosch, Knorr-Bremse and MAN Truck & Bus, announced plans to put autonomous trucks on the road by the middle of the decade as part of the ATLAS-L4 project (refer to www.atlas-l4.com) . In addition to this forward-looking cooperation, industry giants such as DB Schenker and Volkswagen Group Logistics have already been acquired for initial projects.
Fernride's CEO and co-founder Hendrik Kramer said, "We want to enable and support the logistics industry to transform into an automated future and to tackle their major challenges and developments. Our technology has proven itself in testing with prototypes and is now being developed to production maturity. I am all the more pleased to have gained a heavyweight in the industry for this next milestone in our company's development. Holger Mandel is a trucker with heart and soul and enjoys a first-class reputation in the market. With his experience in the logistics, trucking and capital goods industries, as well as his network of top contacts, we will be able to drive the transformation to an automated and sustainable future even faster."
Holger Mandel moves to the innovative startup culture at Fernride after a 30-year career with renowned large corporations and global market leaders. After holding positions in top management at the Volkswagen Group, AB Volvo and Caterpillar, he is looking forward to his new role: "It is a great pleasure for me to contribute my industry experience and my large network to the implementation of these new ideas and technology developments. I am convinced of the Fernride scalable platform technology, their dynamic approach and the motivated team that has been built up over the last few years. The logistics industry is facing the biggest transformation in its history and demands new, innovative and creative solutions."
Fernride enables automated and sustainable logistics by combining the human skills of in-office drivers - known as teleoperators - with autonomous driving technology in a scalable platform.
In addition to the platform itself, the turnkey solution includes sustainable trucks from leading OEMs, their seamless integration into existing logistics processes and their remote, reliable operation under individual "as-a-service" agreements. This enables logistics customers, which include DB Schenker or Volkswagen Group Logistics, to take the next step in automating their processes today.
Fernride was spun out in 2019 by Hendrik Kramer, Dr. Maximilian Fisser and Jean-Michael Georg after ten years of research at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and quickly attracted venture capital (> €10 million 2021), customers and talent - becoming a European technology champion.