Four new startups join the Detroit Smart Parking Lab

The Detroit Smart Parking Lab, a mobility incubator, has welcomed four new startups, officials said Thursday.

These startups, supported by more than $250,000 in grants from the Michigan Mobility Funding Platform, will spend the next six months testing and demonstrating autonomous and electric vehicle charging technology.

The four companies selected were a good fit for the incubator’s recently formed Autonomous Movement Initiative because they focus on areas including smart parking technology, electric vehicle charging infrastructure and first and last-mile logistics, said Kevin Mull, senior urban strategy and innovation director for Bedrock.

“The four companies that applied, they had the best combination of the autonomous movement of their product, along with addressing one of those focus areas,” Mull said.

Mull said they receive applications from more than 20 applications from companies internationally. The four selected companies are:

Italy-based ALBA Robot tests and demonstrates how self-driving personal mobility vehicle services can benefit people with disabilities through on-demand AV transportation to and from facilities including airports, hospitals and other community places.

AuTowed LLC, a joint venture between an Indiana group and a Michigan-based partner, is developing an autonomous prototype to simplify and address the challenges of cargo transportation by hitching, unhitching and parking cargo trailers.

Novi-based ION Dynamics focuses on on-demand EV charging. The company demonstrates how its autonomous charging bot can reduce EV charging installation costs by more than 50% compared to traditional fixed charging stations.

California-based Joule Labs will test and prepare its autonomous charging system for commercialization while establishing a permanent presence in Michigan. The company's goal is to partner with other Detroit energy and commercial real estate companies to expand automated charging services stations throughout the state.

Bedrock, Bosch, Ford Motor Co. and the State of Michigan launched DSPL in 2021. It's operated by NextEnergy and Park Rite from the first floor of The Assembly, 1702 W. Fort St.

DSPL officials say the newest group of startups will build on the success of its previous 20 companies that have worked on autonomous parking, EV charging and mobility infrastructure technologies.

“Detroit is a very special place to us and to see all of the technological innovation and almost having Detroit emerge as a modern tech hub, with leadership from companies like Bedrock and others, putting a lot of money and focus on this…” said Josh Bitterman, head of Business Development for ION Dynamics. “It’s a great place, obviously, for us to showcase our solution to folks in business, folks in government with this growing need for this type of infrastructure.”

Bitterman said he is among a team of four planning to planning to launch an autonomous driving robot in the next six months to a year. The mobile robot has a large capacity battery.

“lt creates a tremendous amount of flexibility, not only for the end user, but really for the property or business owner, in the sense that they're not having to marry a significant chunk of their real estate strictly to EV charging,” he said. “We're able to deliver charging services wherever it's needed, whenever it's needed on demand.”

Because the device is mobile, the equipment is off grid, saving a tremendous amount of money, Bitterman said.

“Business and property owners want to electrify to meet this growing demand, but it's extremely cost prohibitive with fixed charging stations, you know, to the tune of hundreds of thousands if not into the millions of dollars for a single install,” he said. “And so by having most of our equipment be off grid and just powered by these decentralized energy resources that are global and autonomously driving, we're able to save the business or property owner hundreds of thousands of dollars and provide them with a lot of flexibility for electrification.”

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