DETROIT — BrightDrop, General Motors’ electric van-powered goods and delivery service, has appointed executives from Lyft, Postmates and Nio to fill out its leadership team.
BrightDrop has named Anthony Armenta as chief technology officer, Rachad Youssef as chief product officer, Shaluinn Fullove as chief people officer and Steve Hornyak as chief revenue officer, the company said in a statement Tuesday.
The appointments are effective immediately.
“Their robust backgrounds — spanning robotics, autonomy and machine learning — will enable us to accelerate our vision of delivering better cities while helping decarbonize the last mile of delivery,” said Travis Katz, BrightDrop CEO, said in the statement.
Armenta, Youssef and Fullove will work out of BrightDrop’s San Francisco Bay Area offices, and Hornyak will be based in Atlanta.
BrightDrop plans to launch the EV600 van later this year, initially built by a supplier in Livonia, Mich., before it moves to GM’s assembly plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, next year. BrightDrop’s first dealerships are slated to open this year.
FedEx Express signed on as BrightDrop’s first customer in January, starting with about 500 EV600 orders. FedEx also is piloting BrightDrop’s EP1 electric pallet, which allows delivery drivers to more easily transport goods from the vehicle to customers’ doors.
Armenta will lead BrightDrop’s technology vision and strategy. From August 2019 until this January, he was vice president of software engineering at Postmates, where he led robotics, autonomy, fleetware and infrastructure teams to build Postmates’ robotic sidewalk delivery platform.
Youssef will lead the design, development and management of BrightDrop’s products, software and services as chief product officer. His most recent post was vice president of software product management for Nio, where he was responsible for the autonomous-vehicle road map and reimagining the in-cabin experience.
Fullove, BrightDrop’s chief people officer, previously was global head of people for autonomous technology and rideshare platforms at Lyft. Before that, she was with Google for 17 years, where she was a founding team member of the Book Search and AdSense businesses.
Before joining BrightDrop as chief revenue officer, Hornyak was chief commercial officer at Fabric, which builds multitenant and private networks of automated micro-fulfillment centers.
At BrightDrop, Hornyak plans to develop the company’s sales and marketing strategy and partner with customers to grow a new delivery service.
