Khaled Hassounah is the CEO of Ample, a start-up that is changing the game for electric vehicles. Coming off the back of $170 million in its latest round of funding, Ample has now partnered with Uber in San Francisco.
Hassounah’s company has a simple mission: to make charging electric vehicles easier and more effective. Instead of waiting hours to charge your vehicle, Ample lets you swap its battery for a new one in only ten minutes.
These are the gas station equivalents of a green future. And as a chief innovator, Hassounah joins a growing troop of entrepreneurs who are decarbonising key sectors of the economy.
Serial entrepreneur Khaled Hassounah
Hassounah has a technical background, graduating from the University of Jordan in 1998 with a Bachelor’s in Electrical and Electronics Engineering. He then went on to become the principal software architect at a software company. He’s also worked as Director of Engineering at a leading instant messaging platform.
In 2006, Hassounah acted as the Director of Middle East and Africa for educational non-profit One Laptop Per Child. He then became the Co-Founder and CTO of MedHelp, growing its user base to over 140 million users.
Since 2017, Hassounah has been on the Board of Directors for KarmSolar, Egypt’s largest private solar utility company. He founded Ample in 2014, for which he acts as CEO.
Khaled Hassounah: problem solver
Hassounah currently works out of the San Francisco Bay area. There Ample operates five battery swapping stations for participating Uber drivers. It’s also partnered with Sally, an electric vehicle rental company for taxis and deliveries in New York City.
Battery swapping is particularly useful for those who don’t have easy charging solutions, such as people living in apartment buildings. Ample have spent over 7 years developing robotics to swap out drained batteries with fully charged ones in just ten minutes. Hassounah reckons it will be most popular among fleet managers, delivery, service and ride-hail drivers.
Not content with staying still, Ample is pushing to reduce its swap time to 5 minutes this year. Constant innovation is the key to creating greener solutions. “Electric should not be a tough decision. … But it has to be cheaper and simpler, because we’re not competing with gas yet.” Hassounah says.
Khaled Hassounah looks to the future
Hassounah’s vision is to eventually have swapping stations all over the US and beyond. For this reason, Ample prioritizes quick installation. They do not require complex construction, come ready-made, and take up the space of only two parking spots.
With the latest round of funding reaching $160 million, Hassounah will make this vision a reality. “We’ve worked on cementing some partnerships so that we’ll be able to scale it across the US, across Europe, across Asia, since we’re ready for prime time,” he says.
The Ample system now partners with electric vehicles from the beginning of the manufacturing process. And for those that haven’t built their cars with Ample, the system is such that it easily swaps in. “We’ve built the system so that it is a drop-in replacement of the original battery. So in a way, from a manufacturing perspective, it’s identical to installing the original battery the car was designed to work with,” Hassounah remarks.
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