This EV could reboot medium-duty trucking by not reinventing the wheel
Harbinger provided transportation from LAX to its HQ in Garden Grove, California, so Ars could drive its prototype truck. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.
GARDEN GROVE, Calif.—There’s no shortage of companies looking to reinvent the delivery experience using everything from sidewalk drones to electric vans. Some are succeeding, but many more have failed by trying to radically rethink the simple, age-old task of getting stuff from one place to another.
Harbinger likewise wants to shake up part of that industry but in a decidedly understated way. If you found yourself stuck in traffic behind one of the company’s all-electric vehicles, there’s a good chance you wouldn’t even notice. The only difference? The lack of diesel smoke and clatter.
From the outside, Harbinger’s pre-production machine looks identical to the standard flat-sided, vinyl-wrapped delivery vehicles that seemingly haven’t changed in decades. That’s because they really haven’t. Those familiar UPS and FedEx machines are built on common chassis like Ford’s F-59 or Freightliner’s MT45, with ladder chassis and leaf spring designs dating back to the earliest days of trucking.
