A new home for transportation tech startups, this time with some room to move around.

For many transportation technology startups, “lab” doesn’t mean benches and burners so much as outdoor spaces to install charging stations or driveways to test vehicles. Office owner BXP hopes to provide exactly what these startups are looking for, by launching a new research and incubation center for transportation technologies at its CityPoint development in Waltham.

On Wednesday, BXP announced it would use sections of its office park overlooking Route 128 as part of a five-year partnership with Mass Mobility Hub, a recently formed company. which aims to promote local startups in the field of transport technologies. At this point, neither partner is saying how much space they will use for the project, other than that it will occupy a mix of indoor and outdoor locations around CityPoint’s seven buildings. The financial terms of the partnership were also not disclosed.

The Mass Mobility Hub opened its first site in a CIC coworking space in Cambridge earlier this year with Jamey Tesler, a former Baker administration transportation official, as executive director. Tesler said the Mobility Hub also needed space to move vehicles, to accommodate the testing needs of some of its members. BXP executives, meanwhile, are eager to help launch a new group of innovative companies, like what the company did with the biotech boom in Cambridge’s Kendall Square, where it has a a number of office buildings and laboratories.

The Mass Mobility Hub — which plans to play a role similar to that of MassRobotics in the state’s robotics industry, or LabCentral for biotech companies — has been in the works for several years, with the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, a group of high-level CEOs. , partnering with Zipcar and others to provide networking, mentoring and support to startups. Although the focus has been on Boston-area startups, the hub’s founders hope to eventually reach every corner of the state. The BXP partnership represents a logical next step, giving startups like car battery company SparkCharge or e-bike startup CargoB some room to move around.

CargoB is an electric bike sharing program and one of the transportation technology startups state officials hope to incubate in Massachusetts.David L. Ryan/Globe team

Bryan Koop, director of BXP, said many startups are now looking for more flexible space than just a desk in a coworking office, including places with warehouses, loading docks and hardware labs.

“The uses we see among our customers are not as standardized as they used to be,” Koop said. “We need to figure out how we’re going to respond to that in this new economy. … We really thought: let’s experiment like we did in Kendall Square.

Koop also hopes that some of the technologies developed by these transportation startups can eventually evolve for use in the construction sector, particularly regarding batteries and materials.

The pandemic delayed the launch of the Mass Mobility Hub, but it is now gaining momentum as the Healey administration moves closer to an economic development bill that could set aside tens of millions of dollars each year for climate technology startups. This is expected to pass the Legislature this fall, while the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center recently launched an effort to identify local industry testing and research needs.

“This opportunity is being exploited elsewhere in the country,” Tesler said. “What we wanted to do is provide a model in Massachusetts for this, and a place to do it.”

Jon Chesto can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow him @jonchesto.