Shares of Electric Last Mile Solutions popped on their buying and selling debut Monday on the Nasdaq, including to a rising checklist of speculative electric-vehicle start-up firms to go public by offers with particular goal acquisition firms.

The Michigan-based firm plans to start manufacturing of a small electrical industrial van at a manufacturing facility in Indiana this fall, in keeping with ELMS CEO James Taylor. The plant final produced gas-guzzling Hummer SUVs within the mid-2000s.

Shares of the corporate — ticker image “ELMS” — opened Monday at $11.10. They jumped by as a lot as 9.8% earlier than dropping most of these good points. The inventory was buying and selling up by about 1.9% at about 11:40 a.m. ET.

Taylor, a former government with General Motors, mentioned he believes the corporate is totally different from different EV start-ups as a result of it’s concentrating solely on industrial autos. Its electrical van additionally is predicated off a car already being produced by Chongqing Sokon Industry Group Stock in China.

“We require a lot much less capital. We’ve a break-even level a lot earlier and, frankly, our plan from day one has been very, very conservative,” he mentioned throughout an interview Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “Our total danger is far, a lot decrease than the opposite entrants on this area from an EV standpoint.”

ELMS agreed to go public by a reverse merger with blank-check firm Discussion board Merger III Corp. in December that valued the EV firm at $1.4 billion.

When the deal was introduced, traders have been bullish on EV start-up firms akin to ELMS. Nonetheless, that bullishness has turned to skepticism this 12 months following SPAC-backed automotive firms akin to Lordstown Motors and Canoo altering enterprise plans and ousting prime executives amid inquiries by the U.S. Securities and Trade Fee. There’s additionally extra competitors coming within the EV market from established automakers akin to GM and Ford Motor.

Taylor mentioned ELMS is “more than happy” to have obtained its money and closed the deal when it did as an alternative of attempting to take action now.

“I am glad we’re not beginning a SPAC at the moment,” he mentioned. “No query, there’s been some challenges in a couple of of the SPACs.”

The deal supplied ELM with $379 million in gross proceeds, together with $155 million from non-public traders akin to BNP Paribas Asset Administration and Jennison Associates.